Sustainable

Hotel Practices
and its Influence on Consumer Buying Behavior
-A Comparison between Vienna and Hong Kong -

Bachelor Thesis

- Susanne Klepsch & Julia Schneider -

As the awareness of the need for protecting our natural reserves for future generations rises,
sustainability and environmentally friendly practices are starting to gain more and more
importance (Honey, 2008). According to Sloan et al. (2009) shareholders, employees and
customers have increasing expectations of the tourism industry in terms of responsible behavior
concerning economic, social and environmental factors. Especially in the tourism and hospitality
industry there are lots of possibilities to enhance sustainable business strategies and pollution
free workflows. Although there are already many hotels adapting sustainable operating
procedures, they still represent a minority because of start-up efforts and costs. At this point,
not only is the willingness of tourism enterprises for changes towards sustainability essential,
but the government also plays a pivotal role in setting measurements to preserve the ecosystem
(World Travel & Tourism Council, 1995).

Poorly managed tourism has an immense impact on the environment around the world and
although many businesses ignore those impacts for the present, they will eventually be forced to
come to terms with the environmental consequences of their unsustainable actions (Middleton
& Hawkins, 1998). This opinion is shared by Ball et al. (2007, p.107), who state that
environmental impacts are often exacerbated as tourism expands, and these impacts in turn are
likely to adversely affect the tourism product and demand.

All the above is setting the scene for this bachelor thesis, which is focusing on the steadily
growing importance of sustainable operating procedures in hotels and how far at this point in
time they are already integrated in a hotels day-to-day operation. In a second step, it will be
identified to what extent customers are willing to pay a premium to support sustainability in
hotels. Consequently, two separate research studies are conducted: the first concerning
sustainable hotel practices and the second concerning consumer behavior. These two studies
are described in more detail below.

Study 1- Sustainable Hotel Practices

A growing number of hotels around the world have already successfully implemented
sustainability into their business strategies. However, to identify whether hotels are exhausting
all possibilities of sustainable measures or if there are still untouched opportunities, it is
essential to investigate the differences of relevant implementations in various hotels in different
countries. Therefore, this thesis is concentrating on hotels in a European city, Vienna, and
comparing them to hotels in an Asian city, Hong Kong. Those two cities have been chosen,
because they seem to be very diverse regarding their attitude towards sustainability.
Furthermore, it is a given fact that urban areas are less considered in the sustainable tourism
debate than coastal or countryside regions (Swarbrooke, 1999). Austria started the discussion
on sustainability in the late 1980s and was recently recognised as one of the worlds best
destinations for sustainable tourism in the World Economic Forums Travel & Tourism
Competitiveness Report (Habisch et al., 2005; Austria.info, 2012). Conversely only recently
started the move toward sustainability, when the Hong Kong Tourist Association released an
environmental sustainable development strategy for Hong Kongs travel and tourism industry in
1997. However, this strategy did not bring the expected radical changes, but merely raised
awareness of the need for sustainable behavior (Ball et al., 2007).

With the goal of finding out how advanced sustainability in both cities is today, 10 interviews
with experts from the industry are conducted, six of which take place in Hong Kong and four in
Vienna. Then, the two cities are compared by an in-depth evaluation of these interviews.

Within these interviews, a deeper insight into ways of using sustainability as a USP (unique
selling point) is investigated, which leads to the second study of this bachelor thesis.

Study 2 - Sustainability and Consumer Behavior

The second study investigated the consumers attitude towards sustainability and their willingness to
pay for sustainable services. Therefore, the size of the customer segment, which is concerned with
sustainability, was of interest. According to Solomon et al. (2010) this customer segment is practicing
LOHAS an acronym for lifestyles of health and sustainability. This label describes a growing
number of people, who are concerned about the environment and support environmental practices
by buying products that are produced in a sustainable way. Furthermore, LOHAS are willing to spend
a premium for sustainable business practices (Sloan et al., 2009).

Previously the overall marketing industry was concentrated solely on consumerism, meaning
that they focused on finding the best ways of serving consumer wants. Today, environmental
and sustainability factors are often considered as well when creating marketing campaigns.
Environmentalism represents an organised movement of the society and the government to
preserve and improve the peoples living environment without restricting marketing and
consumption (Kotler et al., 2008). According to the WTO (2004) environmental sustainability is
increasingly important in contributing to the quality of customer experiences and overall tourist
satisfaction.

The study tried to locate all factors of sustainable implications within hotel management
operations that have the power to attract customers. For a start it was therefore necessary to
identify the degree of awareness of the need for environmentally friendly services, products and
practices from the perspectives of both, tourism suppliers and its customers. As there is a shift
towards a demand driven marketplace, the customer determines what a hotel has to offer.
According to Sloan et al. (2009, p.102) Consumers, not governments, are the driving force
behind the trend of companies to develop environmental stewardship. Based on the study, the
main aim is to find out how much customers, coming from different parts of the world, are
willing to pay a premium included in their room rate for supporting the positive development of
sustainable hotel practices. Furthermore, this study focuses on the comparison of this customer
willingness between the eastern and the western parts of the world.

To sum up, our two broad research questions for this thesis are:

1) How are hotels in Vienna and Hong Kong adapting sustainability in their operations and
business strategy?

2) To what extent are customers willing to pay a premium for sustainability in hotels?

Sustainable Hotel Practices
and its Influence on Consumer
Buying Behavior

-A Comparison between Vienna and Hong Kong -

Bachelor Thesis for Obtaining the Degree

Bachelor of Business Administration

Tourism and Hospitality Management

Submitted to PD Dr. Astrid Dickinger

Susanne Klepsch & Julia Schneider

(0911536) & (0911511)

Vienna, June 01, 2012






Declaration of Authorship

We declare that this dissertation is our own unaided work. We have not included
any material or data from other authors or sources, which are not acknowledged
and identified in the prescribed manner. We have read the section in the exam
regulations on plagiarism and understand that such offences may lead the
Examinations Board to withhold or withdraw the award of Bachelor of Business
Administration.

______________________ __________________________________

Date Signature

______________________ __________________________________

Date Signature

Table of Contents

1 INTRODUCTION 8

2 SUSTAINABILITY 11

2.1 DEFINITION 11
2.2 HISTORY 11
2.3 IMPORTANCE IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY 14

3 SUSTAINABILITY AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR 19

3.1 SUSTAINABILITY AS A USP 19

3.2 PROMOTING SUSTAINABILITY: GREEN MARKETING 20
3.3 TARGET GROUP AND THEIR BEHAVIORAL INTENTION 22

4 SUSTAINABLE HOTEL PRACTICES 26

4.1 TECHNICAL FITTINGS AND SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES IN HOTELS 26

4.2 SUSTAINABILITY TRAINING PROGRAMS 30
4.3 HOTELS ECO CERTIFICATES 31
4.3.1 HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL ECO CERTIFICATION SYSTEMS 32
4.3.2 MAJOR ECO CERTIFICATION SYSTEMS: ISO 14001 AND GREEN GLOBE 21 34
4.4 GOVERNMENTAL SUPPORT 37

5 METHODOLOGY 43

5.1 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH 43

5.1.1 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS 43
5.1.2 CARRYING OUT QUALITATIVE RESEARCH 45
5.1.3 RESULTS OF THE IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS 48
5.1.4 LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY AND FURTHER RESEARCH 69
5.2 QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH 71
5.2.1 HYPOTHESES 71
5.2.2 SURVEY 71
5.2.3 RESULTS 79

3






5.2.4 LIMITATIONS OF THIS STUDY AND FURTHER RESEARCH 92

6 CONCLUSION 94

BIBLIOGRAPHY 96

APPENDICES 104

APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW GUIDELINES 104

APPENDIX 2: EXPERT INTERVIEW RESULTS HONG KONG 105
APPENDIX 3: EXPERT INTERVIEW RESULTS VIENNA 122
APPENDIX 4: ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE 129
APPENDIX 5: QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH - SPSS OUTPUT 137
A) SAMPLE PROFILES - BAR CHARTS 137
B) FREQUENCY TABLES - ACCOMMODATIONS AND EXPENDITURES 138
C) IMPORTANCE OF DIFFERENT BOOKING DECISION FACTORS - BAR CHARTS 140
D) IMPORTANCE OF DIFFERENT BOOKING DECISION FACTORS - FREQUENCY TABLES 141
E) WHAT MAKES A HOTEL GREEN - FREQUENCY TABLES 142
F) REASONS FOR HOTELS TO PERFORM GREEN - FREQUENCY TABLES 145
G) WHAT MAKES PEOPLE STAY IN A GREEN HOTEL - FREQUENCY TABLES 147
H) WHO MAKE PEOPLE STAY IN A GREEN HOTEL - FREQUENCY TABLES 148
I) REASONS FOR/AGAINST STAYING IN A GREEN HOTEL - FREQUENCY TABLES 149
J) SUPPORTING GREEN PRACTICES - FREQUENCY TABLES 151
K) NEW ENVIRONMENTAL PARADIGM (NEP) SCALE - FREQUENCY TABLES 153
L) CONJOINT ANALYSIS 158
M) MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION 165

4






List of Figures

FIGURE 1 - MARKET FORCES LEADING TO EXPECTATIONS AND RISKS (WILLARD, 2005) 17

FIGURE 2 - THE NEW FOUR PS OF SUSTAINABLE MARKETING (SLOAN ET AL., 2009, P.90) 19
FIGURE 3 - CUSTOMERS GROWING CONCERN ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY (WILHELM, 2009) 22
FIGURE 4 - 2008 CONSUMER SPENDING IN BILLIONS (NATURAL MARKETING INSTITUTE, 2010) 23
FIGURE 5 - ISO 14001 - EMS CERTIFICATION (JHAVERI, 2011) 34
FIGURE 6 - GREEN GLOBE CERTIFICATION (GREEN GLOBE LTD., 2012) 35
FIGURE 7 - GREEN GLOBE 21 (EARTHCHECK PTY LTD., 2012) 36
FIGURE 8 - DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN HOTELS IN HONG KONG AND VIENNA 68
FIGURE 9 - CONJOINT ANALYSIS IN THE QUESTIONNAIRE 74
FIGURE 10 - NEW ECOLOGICAL PARADIGM QUESTIONS (DUNLAP ET AL., 2000) 75
FIGURE 11 - AGE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SAMPLE 77
FIGURE 12 - CHART OF DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES PARTICIPATING IN THE STUDY 78
FIGURE 13 - PERCEIVED REASONS FOR HOTELS TO BECOME SUSTAINABLE 79
FIGURE 14 - FREQUENCIES OF INFLUENCING FACTORS ON BOOKING BEHAVIOR 82
FIGURE 15 - 5 FACTORS PERCEIVED TO BE INFLUENCING CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOR 83
FIGURE 16 - 16 HOTEL PROFILES USED FOR THE CONJOINT ANALYSIS 84
FIGURE 17 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE HOTEL STARS 86
FIGURE 18 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE AVERAGE RATING 87
FIGURE 19 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE ECO-CERTIFICATION 88
FIGURE 20 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE ORGANIC FOOD 89
FIGURE 21 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE ROOM PRICE 90

5






List of Tables

TABLE 1 - COMPARISON BETWEEN DIFFERENT HOTELS IN HONG KONG 49

TABLE 2 - COMPARISON BETWEEN DIFFERENT HOTELS IN VIENNA 58
TABLE 3 - CROSS-COUNTRY COMPARISON BETWEEN HONG KONG AND VIENNA 65
TABLE 4 - SAMPLE PROFILE 77
TABLE 5 - PREFERRED ACCOMMODATION AND EXPENDITURE WHEN TRAVELLING 78
TABLE 6 - NEW ECOLOGICAL PARADIGM FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION (DUNLAP ET AL., 2000) 81
TABLE 7 - FREQUENCY OF HOTEL PROFILES BEING CHOSEN 84
TABLE 8 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE HOTEL STARS 86
TABLE 9 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE AVERAGE RATING 87
TABLE 10 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE ECO-CERTIFICATION 88
TABLE 11 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE ORGANIC FOOD 89
TABLE 12 - CROSS TABULATION WITH DEPENDENT VARIABLE ROOM PRICE 90
TABLE 13 - MODEL SUMMARY INCLUDING R-VALUE 91
TABLE 14 - ANOVA OF CONJOINT ANALYSIS 91
TABLE 15 - COEFFICIENT OF EACH INDIVIDUAL PREDICTOR 92

6






List of Abbreviations

AAA AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION

CSR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
EMS ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
GHI GREEN HOTEL INITIATIVE
HKSAR HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION
HVAC HEATING, VENTILATION AND AIR CONDITIONING
IHEI INTERNATIONAL HOTELS ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE
ISO INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR STANDARDIZATION
LED LIGHT-EMITTING DIODE
LOHAS LIFESTYLES OF HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY
NEP NEW ECOLOGICAL PARADIGM
NGO NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION
OECD ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
TBL TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE
UNWTO/WTO WORLD TOURISM ORGANIZATION
WCED WORLD COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

7






1 Introduction
As the awareness of the need for protecting our natural reserves for future generations
rises, sustainability and environmentally friendly practices are starting to gain more and
more importance (Honey, 2008). According to Sloan et al. (2009) shareholders, employees
and customers have increasing expectations of the tourism industry in terms of responsible
behavior concerning economic, social and environmental factors. Especially in the tourism
and hospitality industry there are lots of possibilities to enhance sustainable business
strategies and pollution free workflows. Although there are already many hotels adapting
sustainable operating procedures, they still represent a minority because of start-up efforts
and costs. At this point, not only is the willingness of tourism enterprises for changes
towards sustainability essential, but the government also plays a pivotal role in setting
measurements to preserve the ecosystem (World Travel & Tourism Council, 1995).

Poorly managed tourism has an immense impact on the environment around the world and
although many businesses ignore those impacts for the present, they will eventually be
forced to come to terms with the environmental consequences of their unsustainable
actions (Middleton & Hawkins, 1998). This opinion is shared by Ball et al. (2007, p.107), who
state that environmental impacts are often exacerbated as tourism expands, and these
impacts in turn are likely to adversely affect the tourism product and demand.

All the above is setting the scene for this bachelor thesis, which is focusing on the steadily
growing importance of sustainable operating procedures in hotels and how far at this point
in time they are already integrated in a hotels day-to-day operation. In a second step, it will
be identified to what extent customers are willing to pay a premium to support sustainability
in hotels. Consequently, two separate research studies are conducted: the first concerning
sustainable hotel practices and the second concerning consumer behavior. These two
studies are described in more detail below.

Study 1- Sustainable Hotel Practices

A growing number of hotels around the world have already successfully implemented
sustainability into their business strategies. However, to identify whether hotels are
exhausting all possibilities of sustainable measures or if there are still untouched
opportunities, it is essential to investigate the differences of relevant implementations in

8






various hotels in different countries. Therefore, this thesis is concentrating on hotels in a
European city, Vienna, and comparing them to hotels in an Asian city, Hong Kong. Those two
cities have been chosen, because they seem to be very diverse regarding their attitude
towards sustainability. Furthermore, it is a given fact that urban areas are less considered in
the sustainable tourism debate than coastal or countryside regions (Swarbrooke, 1999).
Austria started the discussion on sustainability in the late 1980s and was recently recognised
as one of the worlds best destinations for sustainable tourism in the World Economic
Forums Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report (Habisch et al., 2005; Austria.info, 2012).
Conversely only recently started the move toward sustainability, when the Hong Kong
Tourist Association released an environmental sustainable development strategy for Hong
Kongs travel and tourism industry in 1997. However, this strategy did not bring the
expected radical changes, but merely raised awareness of the need for sustainable behavior
(Ball et al., 2007).

With the goal of finding out how advanced sustainability in both cities is today, 10 interviews
with experts from the industry are conducted, six of which take place in Hong Kong and four
in Vienna. Then, the two cities are compared by an in-depth evaluation of these interviews.

Within these interviews, a deeper insight into ways of using sustainability as a USP (unique
selling point) is investigated, which leads to the second study of this bachelor thesis.

Study 2 - Sustainability and Consumer Behavior

The second study investigated the consumers attitude towards sustainability and their
willingness to pay for sustainable services. Therefore, the size of the customer segment,
which is concerned with sustainability, was of interest. According to Solomon et al. (2010)
this customer segment is practicing LOHAS an acronym for lifestyles of health and
sustainability. This label describes a growing number of people, who are concerned about
the environment and support environmental practices by buying products that are produced
in a sustainable way. Furthermore, LOHAS are willing to spend a premium for sustainable
business practices (Sloan et al., 2009).

Previously the overall marketing industry was concentrated solely on consumerism, meaning
that they focused on finding the best ways of serving consumer wants. Today,
environmental and sustainability factors are often considered as well when creating

9






marketing campaigns. Environmentalism represents an organised movement of the society
and the government to preserve and improve the peoples living environment without
restricting marketing and consumption (Kotler et al., 2008). According to the WTO (2004)
environmental sustainability is increasingly important in contributing to the quality of
customer experiences and overall tourist satisfaction.

The study tried to locate all factors of sustainable implications within hotel management
operations that have the power to attract customers. For a start it was therefore necessary
to identify the degree of awareness of the need for environmentally friendly services,
products and practices from the perspectives of both, tourism suppliers and its customers.
As there is a shift towards a demand driven marketplace, the customer determines what a
hotel has to offer. According to Sloan et al. (2009, p.102) Consumers, not governments, are
the driving force behind the trend of companies to develop environmental stewardship.
Based on the study, the main aim is to find out how much customers, coming from different
parts of the world, are willing to pay a premium included in their room rate for supporting
the positive development of sustainable hotel practices. Furthermore, this study focuses on
the comparison of this customer willingness between the eastern and the western parts of
the world.

To sum up, our two broad research questions for this thesis are:

1) How are hotels in Vienna and Hong Kong adapting sustainability in their operations
and business strategy?

2) To what extent are customers willing to pay a premium for sustainability in hotels?

10






2 Sustainability

2.1 Definition

The main issues that sustainable development is commonly dealing with are climate change,
pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, resource availability and clean water (Peet,
2008). In order to cope with those issues and to develop counteracting strategies against
them, various definitions describing sustainability and sustainable development have been
developed. According to the Oxford Dictionaries, sustainable refers to conserving an
ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources (Oxford Dictionaries, 2012). In
other dictionaries such as the Longman Active Study Dictionary, sustainable is described as
being able to continue, especially without destroying the environment (Longman Active
Study Dictionary, 2004). Nevertheless, the most acknowledged definition was first
mentioned in 1987 in the publication of Our Common Future, better known as the
Brundtland report, from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED), which states that "Sustainable development is development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs." (United Nations World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987).

Specifically in a business environment, sustainability generally refers to the ability of a

company to do business in a fashion that minimizes pollution and reflects careful
management of natural resources. (Esty & Simmons, 2011, p.5).

The number of different definitions and categorizations available for sustainability in

combination with the lack of globally consistent eco-labels, make it difficult to determine
whether products, companies or hotel operations are actually sustainable or not, which
leads to false assumptions and flawed advertising of sustainability (see chapters 2.5 and 3.1)
(Lansing & De Vries, 2007; Gregorio, 2005).

2.2 History

In the last century, humankind has greatly damaged a majority of its natural habitat and this
negative development is yet continuing. According to Munier (2005, p.1) humankind has
very effectively managed to squander the earths resources, clear-cutting a large amount of

11






existing forests, contaminating the atmosphere, polluting rivers, and even altering our
climate.

Munier (2005) is emphasizing this by stating that economic forces are predominantly
responsible for the negative environmental impacts we are facing today, as they have
created a society which is driven by mass consumption of non-renewable resources
producing millions of tons of waste every year. However it cannot be forgotten that the
economy is using natural resources to produce; therefore our society is entirely dependent
on those scarce resources and has to protect them in order to uphold the economy.
According to Peet (2008, p.4), the richest 20% of the world population is consuming roughly
80% of the worlds resources. With the continuing economic growth of developing
countries, also consumption demands for scarce resources will increase, which means that
the 20% of resources available at the moment for the 80% remaining population will not be
sufficient in the future if environmental impacts are kept at their current level.

As of today, there is no end of the negative environmental impacts in sight. As one of many
examples, the number of cars in China and India is expected to grow from less than 20
million in 2000 to 1.1 billion by 2050 (Esty & Winston, 2009), which is one of countless
reasons why the environmental degradation is not going to decrease significantly anytime
soon. Munier (2005, p.2) stresses this statement by saying, humankind continues to use its
resources as if these were inexhaustible and free.

Wilhelm (2009) argues that for too many years, the only ones concerned about the
environment were climate socialists and environmentalists and just recently more people
have realized that humankind is facing an unprecedented challenge, as climate change is
more and more visibly threatening our lives on a planet-wide scale.

It is widely disputed where the concept of sustainable development had its start, as concern
about the societys impact on the environment was already an issue in the beginning of the
20th century. However, the birth of the sustainable development movement is widely
associated with the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in
1972, which was the first major UN conference concerned about environmental issues on a
global scale (Dauvergne, 2005). After some dramatic events such as the Bhopal accident in
India in 1984 and the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in 1986, governments worldwide were

12






induced to implement stricter regulations and laws on companies behavior towards the
environment (Blackburn, 2007).

Thereupon the Brundtland Report was published in 1987 with the main goal of improving
human well-being and minimizing poverty without jeopardizing the existence of natural
resources (Peet, 2008). Soon after, another milestone in the history of sustainable
development was reached with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, where NGOs
together with business leaders from around the world tried to address the environmental
problems caused by humankinds destructive behavior by also releasing the renowned
document Agenda 21 (see chapter 4.3.2). Although society has thus started to recognize the
severe global environmental problems and the urgent need to take action, most of the goals
and expectations set at the Earth Summit have not been met in the subsequent years
(Munier, 2005).

However, it is a known fact that sustainability is gaining importance and the public and
political awareness is believed to have increased tremendously in recent years.
Governments around the world are increasingly paying attention to scarce natural resources
and are implementing regulations to protect them. Companies, from small to medium-sized
enterprises to large, global companies, are calculating their ecological footprints and are
implementing strategies to mitigate or offset their individual impact on the environment. In
the past years, many sustainability conferences have been held in various countries and
even in banks and financing firms the importance of sustainability is growing, as they require
companies to provide information about their environmental performance before a loan is
granted. Various types of certification programs and eco-labels have been implemented on a
global basis and are issued to companies with outstanding environmental performance (see
chapter 4.1).

However, the core challenge today is still to connect the development and the aggressive
growth of businesses with the protection of the planet and the people living on it, even
though these goals are perceived as moving in separate directions and being difficult to
merge. This is because companies often believe that decreasing pollution by adhering to
better environmental standards may be opposing their economic interests and decreasing
their profits (Esty & Winston, 2009). Consequently, in 1997, sustainability expert Briton John
Elkington introduced the triple bottom line (TBL), which refers to the achievement of not

13






only bottom-line performance (profitability), but also social and environmental
performance in order to reach total sustainability (Blackburn, 2007). Before, companies
were mainly focusing on cutting costs, transferring production to developing countries and
thereby neglecting the social and environmental impact those practices had, such as child
work, exploitation of labor, carbon food print through increased transportation, etc.
Consequently, companies slowly commenced to measure their performance by splitting the
single bottom line profit into: profit, people and planet, thus representing the goal of total
sustainability (Jonker & de Witte, 2006). Accordingly, many companies reassessed their
global impacts and with the growth of the Fair Trade movement, green marketing
orientation began simultaneously and exploded radically. According to Blackburn (2007), 60
million entries on sustainable development where found on the Internet in 2006, which was
eight times more than in 2003. Today, sustainability is taking a large part in societies mind,
business strategies, companys regulations and the scope of various NGOs. This has many
implications in regards to international tourism, which are explained in the following
subchapter.

2.3 Importance in the Tourism Industry

As the number of international tourist arrivals is estimated to rise from 940 million in 2010
to 1.8 billion by 2030, the tourism industry is highly recognised as being one of the most
prominent engines of economic development and one of the most important sectors of
economic growth worldwide (UNWTO, 2011). Additionally, in 2009 one out of twelve
employees has been working in the tourism industry and tourism accounted for more than
9% of global GDP (Cukier, 2010). That means that tourism is turning over more money each
year than the oil, automotive or weapons industries (Bajracharya, 1998).

Therefore, the minimization of tourisms negative impact on the environment (e.g. depletion
of natural resources like energy and water overuse, greenhouse gases, waste production,
destruction of cultural heritage, social issues etc.) is gaining importance as resources
required by the tourism industry (e.g. natural resources: beaches, mountains, weather and
any sort of energy, clean waters, etc.) are getting scare because of societys irresponsible
behavior impacting the environment. An extinction of those resources would hinder
dramatically overall economic growth (UNWTO, 2011; Lansing & De Vries, 2007).

14






Accordingly, the importance of sustainability is stressed in the Brundtland report, which
reads as follows:

We see instead the possibility for a new era of economic growth, one that must be based
on policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base. And we believe such
growth to be absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty that is deepening in much of
the developing world (United Nations World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987, p.11).

Esty & Winston (2009) are even going further in seeing two reasons why sustainability is
gaining importance for tourism business operations. First, tourism business operations are
threatened by the limits of natural resources and second, various stakeholders are already
requiring certain environmental standards to be met by companies. In many industries
environmental standards are not just a competitive advantage any longer, but standards
have to be adopted and have become a must in order to survive in a competitive market.
Companies increasingly understand that working to protect the planet also protects their
own companies (Esty & Winston, 2009, S. p.4). As many operational blunders in recent
years have shown, environmental mistakes can quickly ruin a companys reputation and
damage a long-build up market. For example, when Greenpeace released an ignominious
Youtube video on Nestles policy of buying palm oil and supporting deforestation, it created
a social media debacle, which has negatively influenced the companys image (Chitty et al.,
2011). Also, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 resulted not only in an environmental
disaster but also in a PR nightmare for the energy company BP (Jarboe, 2011). Warren
Buffett once said: It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you
think about that, youll do things differently. (Buffett & Lowe, 2007, S. p.27). This once
again emphasizes the fact that sustainability is not necessarily just protection of the
environment, it is additionally fulfilling what todays societies are asking for. This statement
is strengthened by a study conducted by Frooman (1997), which revealed that negative
environmental behavior by companies is indeed negatively correlated to shareholders
wealth. Hence, companies have to understand that being unsustainable may harm their
businesses in countless ways. Furthermore, a lot of opportunities are generated by
environmental initiatives, which, if well integrated into a companys strategy, may cut costs
tremendously and increase a companys profit. Willard (2005) is sharing this opinion by
saying that not just costumers, but also shareholders, NGOs, investors and governments are

15






increasingly requiring information about corporate social and environmental performance.
Especially due to growing transparency, companies are striving to improve their
environmental performance to maintain positive public relations (Willard, 2005).

Esty & Winston (2009) describe in their book Green to Gold how companies can use
environmental strategies to create value and gain a competitive advantage. They state that
the gold that companies earn through being green consists of higher revenues, lower
operational costs, and even lower lending rates from banks that see reduced risk in
companies with carefully constructed environmental management systems (Esty &
Winston, 2009, p.12). Furthermore, a positive reputation, costumer loyalty, and employees
commitment are one of many intangible benefits a company can seize by integrating
environmental strategies into their operations (Esty & Winston, 2009). Companies around
the world have realized that, in order to survive in a competitive and green-requiring
market, they have no other alternative than following an environmentally friendly
development and pursuing successful ways to respond to already generated negative
environmental impacts. Esty & Winston (2009, p.17) state: For those who are prepared, this
new market offers considerable opportunity. But the same growth in consumption threatens
to destroy natural resources and inflict planet-wide pollution on an unprecedented scale.
Therefore counter strategies have to be developed to cope with these issues.

The main barriers hindering companies to implement green strategies are the perceived
cost barriers related to eco-friendly constructing and the lack of understanding that
operating in a sustainable way may cut costs immediately and immensely. Specifically, as the
importance of sustainability is growing and technologies are improving, the costs for making
a company environmentally sustainable are gradually decreasing. Especially in the building
industry, progresses of technology have proved that environmentally friendly constructions
have immense cost advantages for companies. According to Esty & Simmons (2011) the
extra costs for a green building are only 2 percent more compared to a traditional building.
However, green buildings have high savings in resource consumption and therefore become
very efficient and the return on investment on a green building is about four to six times the
upfront cost (Esty & Simmons, 2011).

16






Despite those mentioned benefits of being sustainable, companies are also increasingly
forced into the green track by regulations enacted by the government, which require
companies to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions and consider the needs of the
environment and local communities while doing business (Willard, 2005).

Figure 1 - Market forces leading to expectations and risks (Willard, 2005)


According to Willard (2005) companies are nowadays facing certain risks, such as new
standards and regulations, restrictions and competitive disadvantages, resulting from rising
expectations (see Figure 1). Rising expectations in terms of sustainable development are
according to Willard (2005) created through market forces, such as environmental issues
and the growing green consumer segment. These market forces create sustainability risks,
which can take the form of competitive disadvantage and can even result in business failure
if businesses do not respond to those sustainability market forces.

17






Some businesses take advantage of their sustainability enhancements by using them as
selling points. However, it is uncertain how effective this is. This will be investigated further
in the next subchapter.

18






3 Sustainability and Consumer Behavior

3.1 Sustainability as a USP

The question if sustainability can act as a unique selling point is debatable, especially due to
the fact that sustainability is increasingly seen as a standard rather than a unique
characteristic. Furthermore, the fact that sustainability itself has the power to attract
customers is especially in the tourism industry questionable, as in many customers minds
sustainability refers to a decrease in services provided. However, as the public is showing an
increased concern about the environment, sustainability is turning into a strategic tool that
can boost a hotels competitive advantage (Lee et al., 2010), often referred to as Eco-
Advantage (Esty & Winston, 2009). This Eco-Advantage is not only beneficial in terms of
attracting customers, but also in terms of stakeholders investment decisions as investors are
increasingly requiring companies to be sustainable.

It is important to realize that the marketing environment has changed simultaneously with
the popularity of sustainable products. In order to influence customers purchasing decisions
nowadays, marketing efforts have to address the
increasingly informed, environmentally concerned
customer by shifting away from the traditional
fours Ps of marketing (product, price, place and
promotion) to the revised four Ps of sustainable
development namely people, planet, profit and
progress (see figure 2; Sloan et al., 2009). This
model focuses first of all on creating wealth for
the company by operating, producing and Figure 2 - The new four Ps of Sustainable Marketing
(Sloan, Legrand & Chen, 2009, p.90)
consuming in a sustainable way, secondly on the
conservation of natural resources and thirdly on the well-being of the society by enabling
them to benefit from a companys success. To accomplish all those corner stones, progress
as a driver is indispensible, as without progress and continuous improvement, a company is
not able to fully integrate sustainability into their day-to-day business.

However, the development of sustainability as a marketing tool is not a single strategy that
is applicable to all companies, in every place in the world and in all circumstances (Esty &

19






Winston, 2009). The question, if sustainability can serve as a unique selling point, broadly
depends on the industry and its market.

Nevertheless, it can be said that more and more companies all over the world try to use
sustainability to gain a competitive advantage by selling and promoting sustainable features
of their products. This promotion, often resulting in so-called Green Marketing, is described
in the next subchapter.

3.2 Promoting Sustainability: Green Marketing

Marketing in general is about managing profitable customer relationships by communicating

information, responding to customer needs and therewith creating value for customers,
which are in return stimulating consumption and generating customer satisfaction (Kotler &
Armstrong, 2010).

Nowadays, a shift of consumer awareness and consumer priorities in purchase decision

making can be identified, as consumers are gradually more on the lookout for products
which are beneficial for ones health, for the community and for the planet (Solomon et al.,
2009).

Companies worldwide have noticed this conscientious consumer segment and have adapted
their marketing strategies in order to obsessively promote each and every green aspect of
their products. This so-called Green Marketing - advertising and promoting with a focus on
how eco-friendly products are - is becoming increasingly important in every industry
worldwide (Solomon et al., 2009). Also in the tourism industry, terms such as eco-tourism or
sustainable tourism are increasingly being used and are helping in attracting
environmentally conscious tourists (Lansing & De Vries, 2007).

In principle, Green Marketing is not about stimulating customers to consume less, but to
consume more responsibly. Marketing possesses the power of changing modes of
consumption, spending patterns and quality standards and therefore plays a significant role
in developing sustainability by encouraging responsible consumption (Sloan et al., 2009).

Wilhelm (2009) suggests that in an epoch, where market forces are constantly changing,
competition is increasing and market differentiation is becoming harder, companies should

20






seize the opportunity to attract customers, create positive publicity and increase customer
loyalty by implementing green strategies and providing eco-friendly products and services.

Although, green marketing may influence consumer buying decisions in a positive way, many
large companies do not promote their sustainable efforts to the public. This is due to various
reasons. Sometimes, they do not perceive sustainability as a selling point, or they might
not want to automatically attach a non-sustainable image to other products offered by
them, which are not explicitly promoted as green. Some companies also deliberately
decide not to promote sustainability as they are trying to avoid the attention of NGOs and
do not want to attract any unwanted disputes (Lange & Meier, 2009). Also, many companies
fear being blamed for greenwashing, which refers to the act of using environmentally
friendly advertising to cover up environmental malpractice or using it in order to attract
customers although no sustainable efforts are actually made (Sloan et al., 2009).

Nevertheless, companies increasingly implement green marketing as they are trying to

address the needs of an evolving consumer base, which is concerned about environmental
friendliness and sustainability. In the next subchapter these specific target groups and their
purchasing behaviors are discussed.

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3.3 Target Group and Their Behavioral Intention

The main target group of sustainable products and services are green customers, who are
not only concerned about the environment, but also about social well-being on a global level
(Willard, 2005). The driving issues leading this relatively new social group are climate
change, pollution, depletion of natural resources, waste, green house gases, and corporate
responsibility. (Willard, 2005) The degree of being green varies among consumers, from
merely caring about protecting the environment to actually buying green products (see
Figure 3).

Figure 3 - Customers growing concern about sustainability (Wilhelm, 2009)

These large percentages in every category emphasize again that customers have begun to
pay more attention to what they buy and where the products come from. Research is
continually showing that consumers have a strong preference for more sustainable products
and services. Consumer purchasing decisions strongly reflect these new values. Instead of
products just being compared regarding price, quality, and performance, social responsibility
and sustainability are now not only taken into consideration, but are often even eclipsing the
other attributes in the decision making process (Wilhelm, 2009).

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The growing trend towards buying organic and local food with minimal carbon footprint is
an observable indication of the publics increasing concern about the environment. This
trend is further shown in the success of hybrid cars and the growing implementation of
other environmentally friendly consumer goods. In general, the demand for eco-friendly
products is gradually increasing with the growing LOHAS market - an acronym standing for
Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, which is covering a $290 billion market segment in the
United States (Natural Marketing Institute, 2010). According to Solomon et al. (2010), this
label describes a growing number of people, who are climate-conscious, have high ethical
values, are concerned about the environment, support environmental practices by buying
environmentally friendly products and services and care about corporate responsibility
(Wilhelm, 2009; Solomon et al., 2010; Ottman, 2011). This consumer group also values
health, social justice, personal development and is commonly willing to spend a premium for
sustainable products in order to promote social and environmental harmony (Sloan et al.,
2009). Businesses should not overlook this increasingly influential demographic (Wilhelm,
2009), especially as 19% of
the US population already
considers themselves to be
LOHAS
(Sloan et al., 2009).
Furthermore, this growing
market is already generating
$290 billion annually in the
US, 14% of which represents
ecotourism, a sub-market
with an estimated growth
rate of 20% annually (see
Figure 4 - 2008 Consumer spending in billions (Natural Marketing Institute, 2010)
figure 4; Natural Marketing
Institute, 2010).

As figure 4 shows, LOHAS generate a significant and growing market for sustainable products
in various categories, including cars, organic food, green hotels and ecotourism in general
(Solomon et al., 2009). Further, 9 out of 10 Americans see themselves as conscious

23






consumers and a large number of college students rated social responsibility more
important than celebrity endorsement when buying a product (Wilhelm, 2009).

According to the GlobeScan's "Environmental Monitor 2002" survey, 22% of people in G7

nations are considered "green consumers", and are willing to pay a premium for sustainable
products. This is supported by Laroche et al. (2010), who state that a growing number of
consumers are explicitly seeking eco-friendly products even if they are more expensive than
alternatives. Likewise, another study by Fairweather et al. (2005) revealed that 61% of
respondents would pay a premium for a hotel with an environmental label.

Furthermore, studies revealed that an increasing number of customers are punishing or

rewarding companies depending on their social and environmental performance (Willard,
2005). In this case, rewarding means buying products or spreading positive word of mouth,
and punishing means refusing to buy products or spreading negative word of mouth
(Willard, 2005).

This is supported by GlobeScan's "Environmental Monitor 2002" survey that found that 43%
of consumers are already actively challenging companies to take on greater environmental
responsibility (Willard, 2005).

The popularity of sustainable products is supported by the wide variety of products available
on the market. This leaves the choice of buying sustainable products to the consumer.
Furthermore, the increasing use of technology during the consumer buying process enables
consumers to make more informed choices and determine whether or not a company they
are buying from is sustainable. Thus, as demand for these products continually increases,
companies are forced to adapt and put more effort into developing relevant sustainable
products (Solomon et al., 2009).

Although it is a fact that sustainability is becoming an increasingly important factor in

customer buying decisions, it is still debatable how customers perceive the excessive
advertising of sustainability when purchasing products or services. Especially in the area of
tourism, sustainable development is often seen as a sheer marketing ploy, as the tourism
sector is typically associated with negative environmental and cultural impacts and therefore

24






faces skepticism among customers and other stakeholders (Lansing & De Vries, 2007). A
study conducted by Robinot & Giannelloni (2010) revealed that a hotels environmentally
friendly management was seen as a basic attribute that should be included in the tourism
product rather than a marketable amenity.

All in all, consumers want to feel satisfied when making purchases and in times of growing
concern about the environment and the earths future, green aspects of a product surely
support this satisfaction (Moreo, 2008).

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4 Sustainable Hotel Practices

4.1 Technical Fittings and Sustainable Practices in Hotels

The traditional pure ecological movement gets more and more combined with the modern
and hip lifestyle of the next generation (Conrady, 2011).

Cool architecture and creative technology are used to save energy, without harming the
attractiveness of the interior and service design. This trend is mainly driven by the change of
customers demands. Todays customers are hybrid and they want sustainable and green
products that include a modern appeal.

A three steps model can explain the evolution of the green hospitality:

1.) Eco-friendly settings: natural materials (wood etc.), reduction of greenhouse gas
emission, energy saving appliances etc.
2.) Holistic sustainable concept: renewable energy concept, regional value chain,
organic products, eco-programs (knowledge transfer) etc.
3.) Green Lifestyle: merge of eco and hipness( Conrady, 2011)

This chapter will focus on the holistic sustainable concept, by concentrating especially on
cities that have to face the problems of limited space available and of being less often
considered for performing green practices than rural areas and small towns. This is a reason
why most city hotels that decide to follow a sustainable strategy usually have to start at the
bottom of sustainable development that accounts for restructured long-term saving plans in
energy and resource management. However, an advancement of green practices in cities
can also be achieved through investments in new technologies, which are not occupying too
much hotels floor space, but have a long payback period (at least 5 years). Those fittings
request a long time of planning and cause huge researching costs which are normally the
main barrier for managers to become active (Baker, 2005).

One of the first hotels that managed to create a green oasis in an urban surrounding is the
Boutique Hotel Stadthalle in Vienna. Through its various technical fittings and its sustainable
building construction it achieved a zero energy-balance, which means that all the energy
needed to operate its business is produced by the house itself (Conrady, 2011).

26






Zero-energy housing generally follows passive housing standards, with the approach to
reduce energy consumption for room heating. This concept can be fulfilled through good
isolation of the walls, floors, windows and the roof. Furthermore installing an adequate
mechanical ventilation system and recovering heat from the exhausted air coming from
technical operations is vital. To build a Passive House, which saves energy efficiently, is
usually 3-5% more expensive than traditional houses, which is clearly offset by the future
return of investment (Letcher, 2008).

Other possibilities to save energy are low-energy light bulbs and LEDs. These energy-saving
retrofits are usually the first and most often used source to save energy in hotels, because
lighting is needed in all parts of a hotel, the guestrooms, public spaces and corridors as well
as in the back-of-the house. All these areas have different lighting requirements, as for
example, the corridor operates 24 hours a day, while the guestrooms just need light 4 hours
a day on average. It is essential for a sustainable and responsible hotel operation
management to explore and supervise all different departments and sectors within the
property, to install proper electronic equipment and systems and to replace older
(mechanical) equipment on time (Bardi, 2010).

Energy-efficient electric motors in air handlers should be used, especially those used all day
long in corridors or those usually operating on maximum power in kitchens and bathrooms.
It is vital that hotel employees are able to speed up or slow down individual heating and air
conditioning motors as slowing down a motor just by 20% results in at least 5% reduction in
energy consumption (Bardi, 2010).

Depending on the hotels geographical location the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air
Conditioning) systems are responsible for 50% of hotels total utility cost, forcing managers
to concentrate on enhancing the efficiency of those fittings (Baker, 2005). Managers should
always bear in mind that modern air-conditioning systems need 30% less energy than 20-
year-old ones, as they are capable of reusing the generated heat for preheating water for
swimming pools or laundry (Greenhotelier, 2004).

In hotels it is further recommendable to install an automatic key card system that shuts off
the guest rooms energy consumption whenever the customer is not in the room. This is
already a standard fitting in most new hotel rooms (Rutes, 2001).

27






Moreover some hotels put printed cards on unmade beds in guestrooms asking the guest
whether or not the linen should be changed. The guests willingness to participate in these
initiatives saves the hotel thousands of liters of water, cleaning products and energy per day.
The same process can be used to limit the amount of fresh towels needed, e.g. only if they
are on the floor, they get replaced (Bardi, 2010).

In order to further reduce the water usage, the water distribution profile of a hotel has to be
determined. Guest rooms usually account for half of the water used in a hotel; therefore the
reduction of usage has to start here. This can be achieved through water-efficient
showerheads (only use 6 liters per minute compared to a conventional showerhead that
uses 11-27 liters per minute) or by using rainwater for flushing the toilet (Seneviratne, 2007).

Furthermore, installing aerators (introduce air into the water stream) or flow restrictors is a
low budget solution but also a highly effective option. Self-closing taps that use sensors to
recognize when the user places the hands beneath the taps are already standard in most
public areas. The leakages from taps can waste extremely high amounts of water, indicating
the need of proper maintenance work. Further reduction of water can be achieved in a
hotels kitchen, which accounts for 7 to 20% water usage and even more energy usage. In
the kitchen it is essential that the employees are encouraged to participate in water saving
projects, through turning off taps when not in use, fill sinks for washing pots instead of
running water, operating dishwashers just at full load etc. (Seneviratne, 2007).

Another big theme in the hospitality environment is recycling and waste reduction. This
starts with small simple changes in working processes. Many supplies can be reused, for
example in a hotel bathroom; shampoo containers should be made out of glass and get
refilled, replacing the small plastic bottles that end up in the garbage bin at home. This type
of waste source reduction helps to reduce waste handling cost, because it avoids additional
costs through recycling, municipal composting, combustion and land filling. Hotels are key
generators of waste, producing about 100 kg per day. Many hotels sort their waste by taking
out liquor bottles, glass pieces and paper in order to resell it (Lebel & Rajesh, 2010).

Food waste is often brought to cattle farms and piggeries to be used as animal feed or food
donations are given to NGOs. The latter is not so common as the hotel often has to bear the
costs for transportation (Franchetti, 2009).

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The three Rs (Reduce, Re-use and Recycle) are of high relevance in the hospitality industry,
as paper and composed beverage accounts for 65% of all hotel waste, whereby 95% of this
can be recycled or re-used (Lee, 2007).

However, it is not just about saving; it is also about the production and efficient use of
energy. Hotel Stadthalle is convinced of renewable energy and therefore gains its own
energy via 130 square meters of solar panels (Conrady, 2011).

Passive solar heating systems are located at the buildings roof, facing the south to capture
heat of the sun and release this heat during hours without sunshine to keep hotel rooms
comfortable without overheating. A single-family home that faces the south with solar
panels can cater on average up to 50% of a households hot water (Letcher, 2008). The
French company Accor, has also installed solar energy collectors in 24 hotels, planning to
increase the number to at least 100 hotels and investing in photovoltaic systems to generate
energy for its Ibis Hotel in Porte de Clichy (Schwab, 2008). Using the sun as energy provider
is the most common form of renewable energy used in the hospitality industry.

Hotel Stadthalle wants to go even one step further by using the strength of the wind to gain
energy through three wind turbines, located on the rooftop of the hotel (Boutiquehotel
Stadthalle Wien, 2011). This project would help the hotel to provide enough own energy for
the hotel guests even in the peak hours of energy use, morning and evening hours, as the
wind turbines operate also during night times, when no sun is shining for the solar systems.
Unfortunately this is still just a theoretical plan, as the regional government has legal
concerns that construction laws may get violated (Wojciech, 2010).

Hotel Stadthalle already belongs to the next generation of eco-hotels, as it combines high-
tech energy production with young and modern lifestyle and interior design. That means
that Hotel Stadthalle has already reached a higher stage of the green hospitality evolution
and should be seen as a role model for other tourism actors (Conrady, 2011).

However, every sustainable program and development has to start with including every
member of the hotels staff, through proper training and education.

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4.2 Sustainability Training Programs

The provision of sustainable training for the management and employees in the tourism and
hospitality industry has only recently become important. It arose from the need to
harmonize tourism development with the protection and conservation of the nature (Ellul,
2000).

Tourism is a highly labor-intensive industry and therefore the staff plays a key role in the
success or failure of environmental business strategies (Chen, 2009).

Sustainability and green development needs first of all the commitment of the entire
organization and a clear direction should be given through a companys environmental
policies. A senior or executive manager should supervise and lead the program and further
establish a green team comprising a representative from each department. In order to keep
a green team motivated and encouraged to seriously participate, it is necessary to present
tangible results by displaying absolute percentages of change compared to the previous
years (Schwab, 2008).

The Marriott hotel chain, as an example, shares its weekly cost savings on energy bills with
every employee through a special Energy Action Board. Moreover the head housekeeper
and the financial controller are jointly responsible to remind colleagues to switch of their
electrical equipment when not in use, resulting in annual 30% energy costs savings (Schwab,
2008).

The best starting point for the improvement of sustainable procedures is in staff areas,
where the guest does not have direct access, as these departments are easier to restructure
and to influence than customer areas. Even though in more advanced stages the guests
should also form an integral part of the green tourism product (Chen, 2009).

As mentioned afore, no environmental program can be successful unless the staff is

committed and understands the need for changes. Proper communications with individual
employees on how they can support the sustainable development to reach a target is the
key for more engagement. In the best case the employer exemplifies how to responsibly
deal with the nature through his own life style (Schwab, 2008).

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According to the Carbon Trust organization, more than of UK employees consider it
important to work in a business that has an active policy to reduce carbon emission and are
willing to cut energy use. Unfortunately many companies are lacking in guidance and
therefore one out of four employees has the feeling that the company does not do enough
to protect the environment. Less than 50% are knowledgeable about their companys
environmental programs (Carbon Trust, 2006).

Some hotels, like in the Marriott hotel group, have green ambassadors who train colleagues
on sustainable office strategies. Moreover sharing cars with lower emission is encouraged
through providing 30 parking areas just for those with hybrid vehicles (Schwab, 2008).

Convincing the staff to actively participate in green programs of a hotel will bring along,
additional to the benefits for the nature, positive effects like increased financial returns and
efficiency (Chen, 2009).

4.3 Hotels Eco Certificates

Hotel- and resort organizations are now pursuing environmental improvement strategies for
more than 20 years. Originally, their efforts concentrated on reducing costs through energy
reduction, minimization of water consumption and the development of computer assisted
measurement tools. Today an eco-hotel has to consider much more elements and
preconditions in order to be recognized as a authentic environmentally friendly company.
For a proper assessment of a hotels green quality and its official public recognition, the
industry introduced different types of eco certificates (Honey, 2008).

The application and participation in all these eco certification programs, eco labels, awards,
codes of conduct and environmental/ sustainable management systems are handled
nowadays on a completely voluntary basis, meaning that no tourism company is forced to
join an environmental initiative. Hence it is even more impressive that these voluntary
initiatives play an increasingly essential role in regulating tourism operations as well as
promoting and improving sustainable development (EPA - Enviromental Protection Agency,
2002).

Through a study conducted by the World Tourism Organization, in which 104 voluntary
initiatives worldwide were reviewed, it became evident that the variety and number of eco
organizations is continuously increasing. Out of the 104, which include eco-labels, 47% were

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just implemented between 1996 and 2000 and further 6% are still in their testing, improving
and early implementation phase. This boom could be explained by the free supplementary
services offered by green programs (see 4.1.2), for example recommendations for good
operational practices are given to companies, which intend to adopt a voluntary scheme or
are interested in knowing more about governments and NGOs guidelines for support and
supervision of the green initiatives. In any case, the overall awareness and knowledge of
environmental threats are growing, but still need to be enlarged (World Tourism
Organization, 2002).

The trend to more and varying eco certification systems is a two-sided medal; on one side a
company can choose the program that best suits their own business concept and
philosophy, but on the other side a common international system would be more beneficial
for comparing and benchmarking hotel operations over different countries (Gregorio, 2005).
By searching the Internet via the search engine Google one can learn that Australia and
Costa Rica are heavily promoting their own national certification organizations, customized
to their own needs and in line with national governmental regulations.

However, this document is outlining the major and most common internationally recognized
certifications used in the hotel industry.

4.3.1 History of International Eco Certification Systems

In 1992 Hilton International and some other, but smaller hotel groups made one of the first
moves towards general eco certifications in the hotel industry. They were the founding
members of the International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI) aiming at the
implementation of valid guidelines within the global hotel business and to raise general
awareness for all sustainable issues. The IHEI grew to 86 members involving 11,200 hotels all
over the world and was later merged with the International Tourism Partnership, the
tourism program of The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum based in
London (Honey, 2008).

Meanwhile CERES an US based network of environmental organizations, investment funds

and public interest groups launched a similar program, the Green Hotel Initiative (GHI). It
focuses on large corporations that use intentionally environmentally friendly hotels for
business travel. Unfortunately these networks still lack officially accepted measureable

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criteria. To address this problem, a number of voluntary tourism certification programs have
been introduced over the last 15 years to truly measure a hotels environmental and
economic impacts, resulting in sixty to eighty international certification programs today.
Most of them have their origin in Europe, although there is also a growing number of
programs invented in Latin America (Honey, 2008).

However, it is still hard to find a common certification basis that applies for all hotels around
the world. The thereby arising problem of comparability can also be found in star rating
schemes like Michelin. The French tire company has introduced the first categorization
programs in 1900. Unfortunately a lot of other star rating programs emerged, for example
the American Automobile Association (AAA) and many other national classifications, making
it today even more complex to find common classification rules. The same problem can be
found in various green certification programs, which were first launched in the wake of the
UNs Rio Earth Summit in 1992 (Honey, 2008).

The only chance hotels have to receive comparable data concerning sustainability and
environmental protection programs is to hold on some already well-established and
internationally recognized programs. Therefore most hotel chains and large resorts are using
environmental management systems (EMS), one of which is ISO 14001, an International
Organization for Standardization. ISO 14001 can operate on a global base and in different
tourism sectors and has tailored standards to individual business needs (see chapter 4.3.2).
However, start-up costs for EMS are significant high. For example, medium-sized companies
already need to invest approximately 40.000 US$ to run an EMS and larger businesses will
need a lot more financial resources to get started. Furthermore, it is very complicated,
because of its heavy engineering orientation, concentration on internal operations, without
taking into account all sorts of external effects (Aminatuzuhariah , 2007).

The above may have been the reason why Green Globe 21 has alternatively established
itself in more than 40 countries with an impressive number of participants as the only
significant international certification program that covers all aspects of the industry. Almost
100 hotels, primarily located in the Caribbean and other prominent tourist locations, have
already earned their Green Globe 21 certification. However, the tight criteria that have to
be fulfilled in order to gain a Green Globe 21 certification could be the reason why many
other countries tend to establish their own national classification programs (Honey, 2008).

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4.3.2 Major Eco Certification Systems: ISO 14001 and Green Globe 21

The following chapter emphasizes the importance and relevance of ISO and Green Globe
criteria in order to achieve a sustainable and green performance.

The ISO 14001 was first published in 1996 and a

revised edition was issued in 2004 in order to
provide for a tourist organization the necessary
guidelines for the implementation and operation
of an effective and efficient environmental
Figure 5 - ISO 14001 EMS Certification (Jhaveri, 2011)
management system (EMS) (Edwards, 2004).

The ultimate aim of an effective EMS is to minimize negative effects on the environment and
to guarantee constant improvement of an eco-friendly performance. Moreover, ISO 14001 is
a management tool that allows not only hotels but also organizations of any type to identify
and control their environmental impacts and to set objectives and targets that should be
achieved through a systematic and strategic approach (International Organization for
Standardization, 2011). A company gains the ISO 14001 certificate only if it achieves all its
before set objectives.

Once the originally set objectives have been met, they will form the basis for the daily
improvement operations in order to keep the certification. Because real life operations will
always generate and demonstrate the need for further development since with the first
cycle of implementation only the initial negative environmental impacts will have been
minimized and brought under control. Through ISO 14001 implementation companies will
gain special knowledge about environmental hazards that have been unknown before and
with this new insight they will find additional sources where energy can be saved. Meaning
that ISO 14001 is a never-ending cycle of improvement and development (Whitelaw, 2004).

A company that has decided to join the ISO program has to fulfill first some specific EMS
requirements in order to be able to set clear targets.

According to Whitelaw (2004) the requirements of ISO 14001 include:

Development of an environmental policy

Identification of environmental aspects and evaluation of associated

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environmental impact

Establishment of relevant legal and regulatory requirements

Development and maintenance of environmental objectives and targets

Implementation of a documented system, including elements of training,

operational controls and dealing with emergencies

Monitoring and measurement of operating activities

Environmental internal auditing

Management reviews of the system to ensure its continuing effectiveness and

suitability

Only if a company knows where it stands in terms of its environmental interaction it will
be able to move into correct direction.

ISO is not invented to come up with specific levels of environmental performance,

because then specific EMS stasndards for each business would be required and this
would again complicate comparisons. Nevertheless, it is inevitable to make at least some
country specific differentiations to the standard ISO rules in order not to contradict
applicable environmental legislation and regulations. These slight changes should,
however, not harm the possibility of international standardization (International
Organization for Standardization, 2011). As ISO is not fully universally applicable and
many hotels cannot adopt the requirements, another system was needed to keep more
hotels on a green path.

Green Globe, which is now seen as the worlds only

truly global tourism certification program by many
professionals (Honey, 2002), arose from the
principles of Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is a general
document about sustainable development, which
was enhanced by the World Travel and Tourism
Council (WTTC), Earth Council and World Tourism
Figure 6 - Green Globe Certification
Council in 1995 to apply directly to the tourism (Green Globe Ltd., 2012)

industry and to develop suitable programs of action.

However, the new Agenda 21 for the travel and tourism industry (Towards
Environmentally Sustainable Development) was still heavily criticized, as it was busy

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designing an environmental management system (EMS) without concentrating on real
improvements and tangible outcomes. Moreover Agenda 21 was not taking sufficiently
into account variations in tourism operations, like type, location, scale and capital
(Kahlenborn, Imbusch, & Turmann, 2000).
Despite of all these drawbacks, Green Globe became the first international scheme
committed to social and environmental sustainable practices, as it incorporates the
flexibility to accommodate for global, national and even local regulations. Green Globe
states clear policies for the travel and tourism industry that are built on the principles of
Agenda 21 but all on a voluntary basis. The certification system, based on Agenda 21 and
ISO standards, is set up in a way that it responds directly to all major environmental
problems that we are currently facing, like energy and water overuse, greenhouse gases,
waste production and social issues. Companies are motivated to participate because
Green Globe aims to achieve significant savings through less energy and water
consumption and minimizing waste (Honey, 2002). Furthermore, the voluntary process
standards of Green Globe 21 allow more flexibility for a companys choice of means by
which a sustainability objective will be achieved (OECD, 2005). Green Globe 21 was also
created to provide the possibility for tourism organizations to globally benchmark their
green activities.

It has for 20 different sectors of the travel and tourism industry, four very broad
standards only: company standard, standard for communities, international ecotourism
standard and design/ construction standard.

In order to gain the entry-level certification, a given company has to reach a predefined
baseline of socially and environmentally sustainable
performance. After that, the company has further to fulfill
all the other requirements included in the standard in
order to receive the full Green Globe Logo with the tick
(=full certification) (see figure 7; Pizam, 2005).
Once a company gets certified it is allowed to use the
Green Globe logo to inform the rest of the world that the Figure 7 - Green Globe 21
(Earthcheck Pty Ltd, 2012)
company is following a green road (Honey, 2002).
Being marked with a green button, which indicates the concern for the environment
and results definitely in a positive marketing effect (see chapter 2.4, 2.5 and 3.1).

36






In 1999, Green Globe fostered its decision of being a voluntary certification organization
with the words if the industry did not green itself, it was likely that government-
imposed legislation and regulation would force it to do so (Honey, 2002, p.302). This
means that companies either voluntarily participate step by step now or they get
punished later, as they may face new regulations, which will force them to change their
business operations immediately. This leads to the next question of what the actually
role of the government is in green issues and how they support environmental and
sustainable developments.

4.4 Governmental Support

The Governments role in tourism development cannot be described by a general concept or

action plan, as the importance of tourism for a given national economy varies widely. For
instance tourism may be a much more dominant economic sector in small island states than
it is in industrialized countries. Anyway, tourism has always and anywhere played an
essential role in creating employment (Kandari & Chandra, 2004).

As a result all governments are forced to come up with appropriate regulations in support of
the tourism industry and its implications, which have to be in balance with all other industry
segments and people involved in a given country. Unfortunately up to now there is a huge
lack of theoretical work that describes the way the tourism industry interacts with its
destinations and local inhabitants (Meethan, 2001). This results in a disadvantage that
hinders appropriate tourism planning. Since then cooperation of local economies has been
improved, but is still very weak (Bookbinder, 1998; Ormsby, 2006).

In the 1970s first criticism on tourism development was made because of the negative
effects on the environment and local cultures, especially in third world countries (de Kadt,
1976). Consequently, the quantity of literature on the negative impacts of mass tourism
greatly increased in the subsequent years (Brohman, 1996; Clancy, 2001; Cohen, 2004;
Gssling, 2001; Lea, 1988; Weaver & Elliott, 1996; Linnard, 2008).

In response to these critiques alternative tourism strategies emerged, like ecotourism, green
tourism or nature tourism, which had in the beginning modest success in reducing the
disadvantages of mass tourism. One good example is for instance the move towards

37






alternative tourism because of lower investment costs versus dependence on foreign
investment capital (Bookbinder, 1998, Ormsby, 2006).

However, the problem of adapting green tourism is that it is facing a conflict between
economic sustainability of the tourism industry and sustainability of the destinations
environment (Knowles et al., 2004). Therefore the government is caught between the devil
and the deep blue sea. On the one hand if the government would make too strong
regulations the economy would flatten out, but on the other hand if they are too weak the
environment will be exploited negatively.

Tourism is the engine of modernization, as it is responsible for the expansion of international

networks through new communication technologies and transportations (Cohen, 2004;
Guneratne, 2001; McMinn, 1997; Zurick, 1992).

In 2003 the OECD has praised Austria's environmental management, as it achieved its
national environmental objectives and shows international commitments, by improving and
preserving the air and drinking water quality, offering a great sewerage connection system,
increasing the rates of recycling and even managed to reintroduce the salmon in the
Danube. However, the OECD still sees some possibilities for improvement and recommends
Austria to enhance the efficiency of its environmental policies through integrating
environmental concerns also in sectors like energy, transport, agriculture and forestry.
Changes in these industrial parts would have further positive environmental effects on the
tourism and hospitality industry (OECD, 2003).

In 1996 the Austrian government made the decision to introduce an energy and gas tax,
which was very moderate and it excluded renewable energy sources and coal from taxation.
The intention of these measures was to decrease the pollution of heavy smokestack
industries and to change their production methods. But many economist race concerns
about the international competitiveness with countries that do not have these regulations,
therefore the government had to adjust the amount of taxes to each business sector and
give bonuses if companies could manage to decrease their CO2 emissions. Furthermore
some policies for promoting sustainable construction were introduced to support solar
energy and other environmentally friendly energy production sources. (OECD, 2001)

38






Unfortunately the Austrian government, especially in Vienna, failed to make some
adjustments in their construction policies for simplifying the building and project phase of
innovative renewable energy systems. Boutique Hotel Stadthalle in Vienna for example, has
to struggle and fight for the legalization of their project to build three wind turbines on the
hotel roof, in order to produce own energy, since 2009. The government, pressurized by the
hotels neighborhood, argues that the wind turbines would devaluate the districts outward
appearance and too much noise would be produced. In reality the wind turbines would just
cause 38-decibel acoustic emission in a high traffic area (Wojciech, 2010).

Anyway, many areas have special construction regulations and some even got clearly
marked as conservation areas, which are necessary to protect natural heritage or historical
buildings and even city districts. The environmental action plans, particularly for the tourism
and hospitality industry, are as well regionally dependent (OECD, 2010).

In the alpine area there are much more regulations and policies then in the cities. The
government focuses on the aggregation of farming and tourism businesses, through giving
them the possibility to sell private accommodations and honoring their contribution to
landscape preservation (e.g.: willows in the highlands and woods to prevent natural
catastrophes) through giving them financial support (OECD, 2011).

However, it is a given fact that tourism causes dust, noise and needs a proper infrastructure
(hotels, lifts, parking facilities, roads etc.), which again creates more traffic. In order to
decrease this pollution, the Austrian government doubled the road pricing and car taxations
in 2001, but again made matches to the degree of the energy use of a car. The ecological
damage caused by traffic is a serious problem in Austria. The country managed to ban
nuclear power but not the cars and transit trucks, as it additionally has to follow the
regulations given by the European Union and needs to be easily accessible in order to
support tourism (OECD, 2001).

The EU is very serious about fulfilling the Kyoto-Protocol, which should be reached though a
border-sharing declaration, to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases within the EU.
Austria is performing very well as it operates many hydroelectric power plants for energy
production (OECD, 2001).

39






However, recent measurements of the Austrians greenhouse gas emissions are not
demonstrating sufficient progress towards the aimed reduction, since the economic growth
in Austria has caused even more pollution and the emissions are forecasted to reach at least
75 million tons in 2011, versus 68.77 million tons EU-allowance. Up to now, only in 2007,
2008 and 2009 a small decline of emissions has been achieved, which will become evident
when the government has to deliver its progress and achievement report to Brussels
(Ruzicka, 2011).

In Asia the situation is completely different, as there are no boarder crossing environment-
protecting policies in place. Every country has its own strategy to deal with environmental
problems. A perfect example for this, but definitely not a role model for sustainable
management, is Hong Kong, since it has the freedom of its own economic-development-
planning independent from Mainland China. Hong Kong has dangerously high levels of air
pollution, high traffic noise and poor marine water quality, thus heavily impacting the
environment and the daily life of all residents. However, the government still does not see
any need to provide new guidelines for new environmental policies in order to balance
economic development and environmental protection (Loh, 2007). One reason for that is the
unwillingness to change, the other is the fact that a real improvement of the situation could
be achieved only through cross-border cooperation, for example to lower air traffic
pollution. In this case the government would have to specify objectives for the minimization
of ultra-fine particulates and noise-levels with the help of the World Health Organization
(Loh, 2007).

Furthermore, a clearly defined restriction of the traffic circulation in Hong Kong would be
needed. Lowering the marine emission is even more challenging as the Hong Kong ports are
also connected to Shenzhen, which generates the busiest coastal traffic in the world. That is
why Hong Kong and Shenzhen have joint interests to improve water and air quality, in order
to adhere to Chinas new and stricter Five Years Plan (FYP) that asks for more energy
efficiency and less carbon emission. Hong Kong and Shenzhen are at least now forced to
collaborate, to conduct energy reviews and to set green house targets (OECD, 2011).

Water management could also be improved by minimizing domestic water consumption, by

means of higher water charges and higher sewage fees. However, this will not happen in the

40






near future, as it is not common yet to raise fees for public services in Hong Kong (OECD,
2011).

The same could apply for the reduction of solid waste, as without increasing the charges it is
hard to believe that something will change. Moreover, the polluter pays principle is still
just a theoretical idea. Hong Kong sees its chance of being more sustainable primarily in
revising their construction regulatory framework by forcing companies to go for high energy
efficiency and to provide health benefits for employees. Instead of just boosting economic
growth, the government would have to give incentives to promote the use of renewable
energy (Loh, 2007).

As specific knowledge and overall awareness about water protection and land biodiversity is
still very low, local nature conservation policies are weak in outlining coherent
environmental protection rules and plans. The problem of proper planning is that Hong
Kongs authorities see themselves caught in the perceived contradiction between economic
development aims and green wishes. It would therefore need increased engagement of local
businesses, supported by professional leadership, to avoid getting stuck in solely theoretical
ideas (Loh, 2007). The government needs to understand, as Loh (2007, p.6), member of
Hong Kongs Organization of Civic Exchange, explains that no economy can be seen as truly
competitive when the health of its people is under daily threat from pollution and ecological
damage. Furthermore it will be more likely that the society supports green initiatives when
they get informed about the pros and cons arising from governmental actions versus status
quo. However for the future, Hong Kong has good prerequisites to join the sustainable
movement, as the city is wealthy and is able to pay for green transformation needs (Loh,
2007).

The government should not only promote the willingness and openness for being more
environmentally friendly, but also encourage engineers and inventors to discover eco-
friendly and more efficient technologies. The government therefore would need to use a
wide range of policies, flexible and constantly reviewed instruments, the best mix of
complementary, mutually-reinforcing measures (Loh,2007, p.5) and proper coordination of
environmental goals to support cleaner technologies development.

41






Policies would be needed to ensure that the new investments in technologies incorporate
more sustainable technologies and produce greener products, without harming
competitiveness (OECD, 1995).

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5 Methodology
This section of the thesis concentrates first on the theory of qualitative and quantitative
research methods and is then complemented with actual methods used in the research
study and the respective results.

5.1 Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is the most common approach for collecting raw data in explorative
research projects, whereby researchers are either trying to identify a business
problem/opportunity or simply collecting required information to obtain preliminary insights
in an unexplored field of research. Moreover it is a tool to develop models for explaining
relationships between different influential factors and creating reliable scales to measure
market factors, such as consumer behavior (Hair, Busch, & Ortinau, 2000).

The collection of primary data from subjects is primarily done by means of formalized,
mainly open-ended standard questions. In order to achieve high quality answers, it is
therefore necessary that interviews are guided and conducted by an interviewer, who is well
trained on interpersonal behavior, analytical capabilities and interpretation skills.

The main advantage of qualitative research compared to quantitative research is that it is

more economical and less time-consuming due to the reduced sample size used.
Furthermore, detailed data on personal attitudes, emotions, perceptions and beliefs
concerning the research topic can be collected and actual behavior can be investigated and
recorded (Hair, Busch & Ortinau, 2000).

However, qualitative researchers are also confronted with two major disadvantages. First,
the complex and costly selection of a highly trained interviewer with excellent skills. Second,
the limited sample sizes that lead to a lack of reliability and validity and make the
generalization process a challenging one (Hair, Busch & Ortinau, 2000).

5.1.1 In-depth Interviews

In order to conduct in-depth interviews, appropriate experts have to be identified. An expert

needs to possess a thorough knowledge about the research topic, which is gained either
through conducting own research on that topic or through working in that specific industry.

43






The experts must be willing to share his/her knowledge and individual experiences in order
to collect different opinions on the same research field. Through continually analyzing and
testing obtained results the researcher comes closer to a meaningful research model (Rubin
& Rubin, 1995).

The number of interviews needed for a reliable and unbiased research outcome depends on
the quality and complexity of information gained in each individual interview. In case the
researcher is confronted with theoretical saturation nothing new can be explored and
conducting additional interviews becomes redundant (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). In order to
receive accurate and detailed statements in an interview, it is essential to not only take
detailed notes but also record the conversation. The notes should include the conveyed
information and a first interpretation (Babbie, 1998).

Qualitative interviews are characterized by flexible questionnaire designs, which can be

restructured during the process. However, a predetermined guideline is needed in order to
facilitate the comparison of answers at a later stage (Rubin & Rubin, 1995).

All answers and reactions to the research questions need to be clearly interpreted regarding
in which context they were given and who was responding. There are various ways of how to
precede an interpretation of qualitative data (Kepper, 1996). Paraphrasing is used to exclude
superfluous words and facilitate the comparison of different statements. The aim is to find
common and diverse arguments of the experts (Weinhold-Stuenzi, 1994).

It is first essential to identify categories of the given arguments in order to code the text
accordingly. Categories are formed through summarizing the most important factors in the
research field. Thereafter a comparison of the statements within and between the
categories has to be done, through which inconsistencies as well as consistencies are
explored and further explained without subjective influences. Each researcher should be
faced with the same results by conducting the same research, which is hard to achieve if the
interviewer is interpreting too narrowly or personally (Rubin & Rubin, 1995; de Ruyter &
Scholl, 1998). Thus, validity can only be achieved if the findings are representing what
actually was said and measured (Rubin & Rubin, 1995).

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5.1.2 Carrying out Qualitative Research

As this research study aims to gain deeper insights into a hotels genuine attitude towards
sustainability, in-depth interviews with experts from the hospitality industry have been
carried out. This is the reason why a flexible guideline has been developed covering
questions of all areas of uncertainty. This guideline consisted initially of the following
questions; however, the need for adapting and changing the guideline was occurring during
the interviews (see appendix 1 for a more detailed list of questions):

1. Are sustainable practices integrated in your business strategy?

2. Are you training your employees on sustainability practices?
3. What are your near future plans concerning sustainability?
4. Are you aiming to get certificates/eco labels?
5. Are you cooperating with non-governmental organizations that are working towards
sustainability?
6. Do you think that the government will set some mandatory regulations for hotels in
order to protect the environment?
7. In your opinion, is there a relevant change in the attitude of Hong Kongs/Viennas
society regarding sustainability?
8. Do you think that customers are willing to pay more for sustainable hotels?
9. Have you experienced that customers are actively supporting environmentally
friendly hotel practices (e.g. leaving the towels on the towel rail)?
10. How do you use the sustainable aspect of your hotel in order to attract customers?

In this research study, six interviews in Hong Kong and four in Vienna were sufficient as the
answers received were becoming repetitive. The interviewers, for this BBA thesis, Susanne
Klepsch and Julia Schneider, took the role of interested listeners and posed proper questions
to guarantee a steady flow of the conversation. Closed questions were only used to probe
the answers given to open-ended questions with the purpose of avoiding misunderstandings
(Thema-Lyn, 1999).

5.1.2.1 Selection of Experts

The secondary research of existing literature about sustainability in the hospitality industry
helped to gain more insight in the study field and assisted in identifying potential hotel
experts.

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The interviewees were hotel managers or managers of specific departments in well
established hotels in Hong Kong and Vienna taking into account that the selected experts
had diverse cultural backgrounds. Through the prepared questionnaires (see appendix 1)
were aiming to gain deeper insight in a hotels genuine attitude towards sustainability and
how it is embedded in the companys daily business. Therefore hotels that are already
known for their sustainable performances as well as hotels that seemed to be
unknowledgeable about sustainability have been selected for this study.

In order to avoid one-sided statements and to create an acceptable basis for comparison, six
hotel managers in Hong Kong and four in Vienna were interviewed. The selection of the
sample was based on the researchers knowledge about these hotels, which indicates that
purposive sampling was applied.

In the following paragraph the participating hotels are listed including the interviewees,
their name and position, the date of the interviews, the address of the property and the
contact details.

Hong Kong:

Mr. Antonio Chan, Chief Engineer at Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel

th
(Fri, 25 February 2011, Pennys Bay/Lantau Island, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 3550 3944, Fax: (852) 3550
3999, Antonio.chan@disney.com, www.hongkongdisneyland.com)

Mr. Jor Fan, Environmental Management System Manager at Langham Place Hotel
nd
(Wed, 02 March 2011, 555 Shanghai Street, MongKok, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 3552 3388,
Fax: (852) 3552 3322, Jor.fan@langhamhotel.com, Hongkong.langhamplacehotels.com)

Shane Pateman, General Manager of Novotel Nathan Road Kowloon
th
(Wed, 6 April 2011, 348 Nathan Road, Kowloon Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 3965 8888, Direct Tel: (852)
3965 8881, Fax: (852) 3965 8833, Mobile: (852) 6389 8018, Shane.pateman@accor.com)

Ms. Carmen Ng, Environmental Manager for Langham Hotels International Group
th
(Wed, 20 April 2011 at the corporate office: Office Tower, Langham Place, 8 Argyle Street, Mongkok,
Tel: (852) 3552 3815, Fax: (852) 3552 3900, carmen.ng@langhamhotels.com)

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Mr. Patrick Wong, Director of Projects at Intercontinental Grand Stanford
th
(Wed, 27 April 2011, 70 Mody Road, Tsimshatsui East, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 27215161 ext.
2578, Mobile: (852) 6305 6082, Fax: (852) 2315 2286, p.wong@grandstanford.com,
www.hongkong.intercontinental.com)

Ms. Rita Poon, Hygiene Manager responsible for Green Initiatives at Grand Hyatt
th
(Wed, 04 May 2011, 1 Harbour Road, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 2588 1234, Fax: (852) 2802 0677,
hongkong.grand@hyatt.com)

Vienna:

Klaus Christandl, General Manager of Hotel Imperial Wien
th
(Tue, 11 October 2011 at the Hotel Imperial: Krntner Ring 16, 1015 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1 50110424,
Fax: +43 (0) 150110420, klaus.christandl@luxurycollection.com)

Michaela Reitterer, Owner of Boutique Hotel Stadthalle Wien
th
(Mon, 24 October 2011 at the Hotel Stadthalle: Hackengasse 20, 1150 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1 9824272,
michaela.reitterer@hotelstadthalle.at)

Fanny Holzer, General Manager of 25hours Hotel Wien
th
(Tue, 10 November 2011 at the 25hours Hotel: Lerchenfelder Strasse 1-3, 1070 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1
521510, Fax: +43 (0) 152151888, fholzer@25hours-hotels.com)

Patrizia Tonin, Public Relations Manager of Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom
th
(Mon, 19 December 2011 at the Sofitel Vienna: Praterstrasse 1, 1020 Wien,
Tel: +43 (0) 1906163106, Fax: +43 (0) 1906163000, patrizia.tonin@sofitel.com)

5.1.2.2 Interview Process and Timeframe

According to Shaw (1999) it is vital that interviews are carried out in a comfortable and
familiar surrounding for the expert, as this approach enhances the interviewees
talkativeness and willingness to share knowledge (Kepper, 1996). This is the reason why all
the interviews were conducted face-to-face and took place on-site with the exception of the
interview with the manager of Disney Land Resort Hong Kong, which was held at the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University.

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In order to select appropriate interviewees, the Hong Kong hotel market was analyzed and
potential candidates were identified, chosen and contacted via email or telephone. After
receiving positive replies, interviews were conducted starting at the end of February 2011
and six interviews were completed by the beginning of May. Afterwards, the qualitative
research process continued in the middle of October 2011 in Vienna, where another four
interviews were conducted. In total, the interviews were completed within ten month.

In the course of the interviews, merely open-ended questions were asked, which enhanced
the interviewees willingness to talk and to share insider information. Internal company's
websites were also recommended and brochures were given away including information
about their green programs. Moreover most of the interviewees gave us the opportunity to
visit the hotel site in order to receive evidence of their active participation in green
programs.

In the next chapter the findings of the qualitative research will be presented.

5.1.3 Results of the In-Depth Interviews

The results of the qualitative in-depth interviews are first summarized and then structured
into two tables (see below). The first and second table comprises information from the Hong
Kong and Vienna interviews respectively. At the end of each table the most important
statements are described in more detail. Finally, similarities and differences are identified
between Vienna and Hong Kong.

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5.1.3.1 Hong Kong Major similarities of Hotels Major differences between Hotels

Langham Hotels Langham Place Hotel Intercontinental Grand Grand Hyatt Hong Kong Disneyland Novotel Nathan Road
International Group Stanford Hotel Kowloon

Joined - Earth Check - Earth Check - Earth Check - Hyatt Earth Program - Own Guidelines - Green Globe
Program - Green Team - ISO 14000 - Own program - Green - Own platform, directives from - Sustainable Reports of World - Green Team
- Earth Hour engagement head office in Chicago Disney Company
- Green Team - Green committee/team - Green Team - Green Team
- Environmental manager
Enviromental - Waste management (reuse - Waste management (recycle - Waste management (recycle - Waste management (recycle - Waste management (12 types - Waste management
shampoo bottles, recycle cooking oil and use it as plastic bottles, carton, glass) of waste bins, decomposing) (plastic/glass recycling)
Initiatives/ electronic items, safe paper) biodiesel for hotels truck, glass aluminum cans, glass) - Water saving fittings - Towel/linen guest card - Towel/linen guest card
- Towel/linen guest card recycling) - Linen guest card - LED lighting - Key card system (room - Key card system
practices - Key card system - Water saving fittings -Water saving fittings (e.g. sea - No key card and towel/linen sensors) - Water saving fittings (e.g.
- Water saving fittings (e.g. - LED lighting water for chiller) guest card - Water saving fittings toilet-seawater)
showerheads) - Towel/linen guest card - LED lighting - Window stickers, ventilation to - LED lighting - LED lighting
- LED lighting - Key card system - Energy-saving through reduce AC - Joined charity programs (plant - Higher room temperature to
- Energy saving through - Sustainable purchasing (do not centralized AC system, reuse - Recycle food for fish, give trees, clean harbor, green tracks reduce AC
recovering heat from the sell fish or meat from steam from laundry plant, foils bread leftovers to employees for blind people) - Recycle food for fish
chillers to heat water, share endangered species) on window to min. heat and the rest to the organization - Reclaim land - Carbon audit to measure
laundry with another Langham - Joined charity programs production through the sun Food Link carbon footprint, noise level &
hotel in Hong Kong (charity run, food donation, - Recycle kitchen oil; donate - Joined charity programs energy use
- Joined charity programs work with locals) food to local charity org. (supporting locals) - Sustainable purchasing
(charity run, food donation, - Joined charity programs (for - Joined charity programs (AIDS
work with locals) kids and mentally ill people) foundation China, cleaning the
beach)
Staff training - Trained on energy and water - Trained on energy and water - Trained on energy and water - Trained on energy and water - Trained on energy and water - Trained on energy/water
saving, waste handling and saving, waste handling and saving, waste handling and saving, waste handling and saving, waste handling and saving, waste handling and
pollution issues pollution issues pollution issues pollution issues pollution issues pollution issues
- Specially trained on water - Must participate in a - Voluntary participation in - Special training for recycling - Special recycling training in the - Waste separation in the
saving (already 20% less water community event minimum green education programs and (battery collection, oil and food housekeeping department (12 housekeeping department
used) once a year activities (tree planting, beach recycling in the kitchen) different bins) - Encourage staff to raise ideas
- Collect electronic items to cleaning) - First train department heads on sustainability improvement
reuse - Green results of each and they train their - Green seminars and annual
- Cannot see a deeper sense in department are supervised by subordinates trainings
voluntary activities (too few management - Monthly meeting of green - Voluntary participation in e.g.
possibilities) committee beach cleaning
- Employees organic garden

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Marketing - Green = is expected from - Green = is expected from - Information on website - Information on website - Information on website - Green = marketing tool
customers customers - In-house magazines - No direct relationship - No heavy promotion as Disney - Information on website,
- Information on website - Information on website - Marketing through between the room rates and brand is much stronger Facebook page
- Must put their policies in the - Has magazine-type hotel certifications being green - No direct relationship - Feedback forms in guest rooms
lobby because of Earth Check directory including green issues - If the difference in price is only between the room rates and - Display sustainable policies in
- No direct relationship - Give seminars on sustainability small, a sustainable, but more being green the lobby, own TV channel,
between the room rates and issues to other hotels expensive hotel would be energy saving recommendation
being green - Must put their policies in the preferred - Newsletter
lobby because of Earth Check - No direct relationship between
- No direct relationship the room rates and being green
between the room rates and
being green
Customers - Guests are excited about - Welcome green programs, but - Guests ask for certifications - Increased interest of guests in - Awareness depends on guests
green as they use smart some complaints because of especially corporate guests green initiatives (a lot of origin (Europeans interested,
technology (Ipad) to display reduced laundry service send questionnaire about green questions on the internet) Chinese less)
information - Some MICE and corporate issues before deciding to hold a - Some complaints - No complaints about limited
- 80%-90% of all guests reuse customers demand green, but meeting in the hotel cleaning service
shampoo bottles this will not influence final - Less requests from individual
- Companies seek information booking decision to a high travellers concerning
about their own carbon extent sustainability
footprint when staying at the - Brand is more important for - Some are not concerned at all
hotel guests as green is taken for as they just want to enjoy a 5-
granted star service
Hong Kong - Hong Kong is a laggard in - Hong Kong is a laggard in - Hong Kong is a laggard in - Hong Kong is laggard in - Hong Kong is laggard in - Hong Kong is laggard in
sustainability sustainability sustainability sustainability sustainability sustainability
- Has to pay a company to pick - Received Gold at Hong Kong - Received bronze at the Hong - Hong Kong is not - Hong Kongs sustainability is in - Hong Kong less regulations,
up their recyclable waste Award of Excellence 2011 Kong Award of Excellence 2009 environmentally friendly its infancy but certifications (e.g. Quality
- Hong Kong follows the free - Wish to have more support - Joined a program by the Hong - Received bronze at the Hong - Got Hong Kongs Water Building Recognition
market approach and is such as waste picking up Kong Productivity Council Kong Award of Excellence 2011 Environmental Goal Award Scheme)
nd
therefore reluctant to make services free of charge focusing on waste, energy, - Concerned about food waste every 2 year so far - Claims all regulations are
laws and restrictions recycling & education management (3300 tons of - Claims all regulations are voluntary
- Hong Kong follows free market waste per day in Hong Kong) voluntary
approach
Future Plans - More LED lights - Engage the guests to actively - Currently renovated to - 2012 major renovations - Use solar panels - Do more for local community
- Less paper usage through new support green initiatives decrease energy usage (through - Key card system - Reclaim land - Get more local certifications
technologies - More LED lights new AC etc.) - Green design
- Less paper usage through new - Keep customers satisfaction
technologies high
- Join online green booking
networks
- More staff training
- Improve chillers, when old
break down
Table 1 - Comparison between different hotels in Hong Kong

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The most important statements of hotel experts from Hong Kong are referred to in the next
seven subchapters: Joined Program, Environmental Initiatives/Practices, Staff Training,
Marketing, Customers, Hong Kong and Future Plans. The subchapters titles are based on the
structure of table 1.

First of all, attention is given to the subchapter Joined Programs, as all interviewed hotel
experts have mentioned at least one of these programs their hotel is involved in. If a hotel
does not fit into the structure of a sustainable program (see chapter 4.3), they usually
implement their own monitoring system.

5.1.3.1.1 Joined Programs

All hotels with the exception of the Langham Hotel refuse to participate in the ISO
classification scheme. They argue that ISO requires too much paperwork and time, which
could be used more productively. Therefore they implement their own green program for
supervising and measuring their green performance. The Langham Group, however, believes
that ISO is a good system with the only two disadvantages of being overgeneralized and
thus, applicable to all different types of industries. This is the reason why they additionally
use Earth Check, a certification program that is tailor-made for the tourism industry. ISO only
monitors processes, but neglects performances. Earth Check complements this system with
substantial performance monitoring. Intercontinental has joined Earth Check in 2008 for
similar reasons. Novotel, however, is the only hotel aiming for Green Globe certification.

In the next subchapter the individual environmental initiatives of hotels are described. Some
of those initiatives are already taken for granted in every hotel operation while others are
innovative and are aiming at competitive advantage.

5.1.3.1.2 Environmental Initiatives/Practices

All interviewed hotel experts are mainly focusing on the 3 Rs (recycle, reuse, reduce) for
waste, energy and water saving. All hotels have already installed flow restrictors in showers
and taps and Novotel goes even one step further by using seawater for flushing the toilet.
Moreover LED lighting has established itself as a standard in all hotels. For instance, through
LED lighting Disney managed to decrease electricity costs by 10%. All hotels with the
exception of Grand Hyatt have installed key card systems for saving energy and costs as
these systems disable all energy-supplies whenever the room is not in use. Disney Land
Resort has even installed motion sensors in guestrooms in order to switch off energy sources

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whenever the room is unoccupied. Furthermore all hotels provide signs in every room asking
the guest to put their towels on the floor if they want them to be changed. Grand Hyatt will
not apply guest cards as the General Manager feels that they do not correspond to their five
star service reputation.

One of the largest hotel problems is the recycling of food waste by transporting waste to
social institutions or reusing waste as animal feed or fertilizer, as both options are very
costly. All participating hotels in this study supported this statement. The Grand Hyatt is the
only hotel interviewed that managed proper use of food waste.

Moreover all hotels participate in charity programs, as they want to give something back to
the community.

All of these environmental practices could not work out without involving the hotels staff
(Cooperman, Andreas, & Gifford, 2011). The different opinions and approaches of hotel
managers on staff training are discussed below.

5.1.3.1.3 Staff Training

First of all, it should be mentioned that all hotel experts perceive employee training on
energy and water saving, waste handling and pollution issues as highly important. According
to Mr. Chan, chief engineer at Disneyland Resort Hong Kong, acting environmentally friendly
increases the workload of an employee by only 5 % on average, but can make a tremendous
difference to the environment. Further, he believes that the staff is already prepared to do it
and stakeholders even expect it.

The Langham Place Group admits that employees would be more motivated if various
opportunities to volunteer would be given to them, but as there is no person responsible for
organising relevant community events these options are currently very limited. The manager
of Langham Place understands clearly that employees want to do something more
meaningful than tree planting.

After a hotel organisation has managed to communicate a sustainable and green attitude to
its own employees and internal staff, the next step is to publicize the hotels green spirit to
the outside world. A favourable method to get external attention is to implement

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sustainable marketing initiatives. Some examples of conveying this message and the hotel
experts attitudes towards green marketing are given in the next subchapter.

5.1.3.1.4 Marketing
All hotels provide information about their environmental initiatives via their website.
Novotel even provides feedback forms in their guest rooms to gain more information
concerning customer opinions and demands in regards to sustainable issues.

Disney Lands sustainability is not separately promoted as their focus is on the well-
established Disney brand, which is the prime attraction for the guests.

According to Hyatt money is always an issue when it comes to new sustainable fittings.
Disney claims that implementing sustainable fittings usually does not affect the room prices,
because new projects need to be self-financing no matter how much they mitigate a hotels
negative impact on the environment.

Novotel puts most of their effort into promoting sustainability by displaying copies of their
sustainable policies in the lobby to raise awareness among guests. Furthermore, they have a
TV channel in all guest rooms that shows policies and energy saving recommendations. This
channel also provides information on and encourages guests to participate in the Earth
Hour, an hour every year in which everyone should switch off all electricity. Novotel also
has a Facebook page on which they post sustainable issues with have online reaction from
costumers and potential guests. Moreover they have a newsletter called the Green Globe.
According to Mr. Pateman, some people even choose the hotel primarily due to its green
strategy. Thus, not only is being green cost-saving, but it also acts as a marketing tool. Even
on TripAdvisor and other hotel review platforms people leave comments about the hotels
good environmental policies. In summary, according to Novotel, environmental policies are
supportive of a hotels marketing and positioning activities.

Langham Place Group sees sustainability as a basic service provided to their guests and not
as a particular feature that adds value to a room. According to the Langham Place Hotel,
customers are primarily choosing their hotel because of its brand and reputation; not
because of their green policies, which are often taken for granted. Although Earth Check
requires them to post their green policies in the lobby, the Langham Place Hotel is otherwise

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not heavily promoting their sustainability, as they want to make sure that all operations are
environmentally friendly before they start to involve their guests.

The Intercontinental Hotel promotes its green initiatives in their in-house magazines. They
do not want to call themselves a genuine green hotel because this image would not be
cohesive with their primary marketing strategy. The Intercontinental agrees with other
hotels that there is no direct relationship between the room rates and sustainable initiatives,
as the room rate still depends entirely on the market. However, Mr. Patrick Wong (Director
of Projects at Intercontinental Grand Stanford) believes that if there are two very similar
hotels, but one is more sustainable than the other, people would be willing to pay a
premium to stay in the more sustainable one.

All the marketing efforts should lead to an increase in customer demand and consequently
to higher occupancy rates. The next subchapter reviews the characteristics of guests staying
at the interviewed hotels and their attitude towards sustainability.

5.1.3.1.5 Customers
Hyatt and most of the other hotels are convinced that there is an increased guest interest in
green issues, especially within their target market of business and corporate travellers. The
manager of Disney Land Resorts added that it also depends on the guests origin, e.g.:
Europeans are very interested in sustainability while Chinese are less so.

Langham Group said that there is a high acceptance of green initiatives among guests, which
they managed by promoting sustainability through high technology items such as guest
phones and iPads, which have integrated screens that can display information about the
hotel and its green initiatives. The increased use of technology is also paper saving because
the need for printed information material is diminishing. Another sign of customer
acceptance is that whenever room maids were supplementing already opened shampoo
bottles with new ones, 80% to 90% of all guests would use the old one again instead of
opening a new one. This shows that guests are already environmentally conscious and not
prone to be wasteful. Furthermore, business travellers of many large companies increasingly
ask for information regarding carbon footprints created during their journey. This is
especially true for hotels in Hong Kong, for which business travellers are very important and
therefore the hotels carbon footprint is increasingly checked.

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Langham, being a five star hotel, has also received some complaints because of the reduced
laundry service due to their water saving efforts. On the other hand, some MICE and
corporate customers require a hotel to be green, but it is not common that a hotels
sustainability determines their final booking decision.

The Intercontinental goes even further by stating that more and more corporate guests
decide to arrange a meeting at a hotel provided that the hotel is dedicated to green policies.
Leisure guests rarely send such information requests in advance. Although the
Intercontinental receives positive feedback from its individual guests occasionally, some
guests are still not very environmentally conscious because they expect a certain service
quality from a five star hotel and do not want to face any restrictions.

Moreover it has to be mentioned that customers are not only influenced by hotels green
marketing activities, but also the city and local government can influence the customers
buying decision. The government even has the power of forcing the hotel industry to
operate in a more sustainable way. Below the perceived involvement of Hong Kongs
government is described through statements made by hotel experts.

5.1.3.1.6 Hong Kong

All hotel experts agree that Hong Kong, compared to other countries, is slow in adapting to
new green initiatives and that more should be done. Novotels manager further explains that
the HKSAR government is lacking strict enough regulations and is not stringent on enforcing
policies. He claims that all regulations are on a voluntary basis, but future plans to
implement stricter regulations on waste disposal and recycling are already under
negotiations. According to Mr. Wong (Director of Projects at Intercontinental Grand
Stanford) the government tries to follow a free economy approach in order to attract more
foreign investment to Hong Kong. They are afraid that if Hong Kong is implementing too
many new policies, important companies will be weary of doing business there. However, all
hotels appreciate the green awards given by the government in order to honour green
development.

Hyatt raised concern over high amounts of food waste, as there are 3300 tons per day in
Hong Kong and 200 tons could be potentially reused. Unfortunately the Hong Kong
government is not doing anything to support any reuse programs. Furthermore, a

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monopolized supplier delivers Hong Kongs traditional electricity and therefore companies
are forced to contract with them and have no chance to use renewable energy sources.

Moreover, there is no recycling plant on a governmental level in Hong Kong. This means that
everybody relies on private recycling companies that are processing the waste in China, thus
causing tremendous transportation costs and negative environmental impacts. If China
would suddenly restrict any waste imports, it would cause severe problems for Hong Kong as
all waste would be worthless.

All hotel experts are aware that there is still room for improvement of sustainable hotel
operations. All of them are already working on plans for decreasing their own carbon
footprint. Some examples of future developments are described in the next chapter.

5.1.3.1.7 Future Plans

All of the interviewed hotel managers have specific plans in place to improve their green
programs and environmentally friendly fittings to show more green responsibility.

Hyatt and Intercontinental are even planning to undertake major renovations implementing
a greener and more energy efficient design. Disney will be the first hotel in Hong Kong to use
solar panels with an expected payback period of 10 years.

The Langham Place is planning to join a green online booking platform in order to better
promote their sustainable philosophy. Furthermore, their next future plan is to improve
their air-conditioners to safe energy and to be more efficient. However, the basis for all
investment decisions depends ultimately on costs and return on investment, which is the
reason why they will only install new air-conditioners once the old ones are worn out.

The manager of the Langham Hotel Group candidly states that their green initiatives are
primarily aiming at saving costs and usually do not reflect the managements concern about
the environment. For more detailed interview responses, please refer to appendix 2.

In the next chapter 5.1.3.2 the statements of hotel experts from Vienna are explained in
order to come to a cross-country comparison between Hong Kong and Vienna at the end of
this research study.

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5.1.3.2 Vienna Major differences between Hotels Major similarities of Hotels

Hotel Imperial Wien 25hours Hotel Wien Boutique Hotel Stadthalle Wien Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom

Joined - National classification programs - No green classification programs joined - Quality assurance policy - Follow standards of the hotel chain (ACCOR)
Program (sterreichisches Umweltgtesiegel) - Active participation in Green Brands - ACCOR received first place at Tomorrows
- Follow standards of the hotel chain - All awards received without applying Value Rating of the biggest hotel chains
(Starwood hotels) worldwide
Enviromental - First priority: social projects/community - First priority: social projects (Rote Nasen, - First priority environmental protection - Social (AIDS campaign) and environmental
engagement (provide education) Movember) - Resource Management (LED lighting, green guest projects (tree planting) have same priority
Initiatives/ - Resource management (LED lighting, water flow - Waste management (shredder for bio-waste, card, no AC, use of rain water etc.) - Construction: solar panels, room supplied with
restrictors, green guest card) reusable shampoo bottles) - Waste Management energy only after check-in
practices - Waste management - Resource Management - Construction: Hotel is a passive house, photovoltaic - Waste management
- Four pipe water system (LED-lighting, water flow restrictors) system, solar panels, - Resource management (special energy
- Biological cleaning products - Bio- Products & short distance food system)
- Duck pond - Offer bicycles (reduce room price if guest travels by
- Reuse secondhand furniture train)
- Offer bicycles to guests
Staff training - Constant supervision and training on more - Sustainable behavior on a voluntary basis - First priority - Constant supervision and training on more
efficient resource usage - Trained on green issues at the beginning of the - Constant supervision and training on more efficient efficient resource usage
- Voluntary money-collecting events for UNICEF employment only resource usage
and participation in a biking race - Seminars
Marketing - No active promotion of green programs - No active promotion of green programs - Use their green movement as a marketing tool (first - No active promotion of green programs
- Being green is not a competitive advantage - No information on sustainability on their website zero energy balanced hotel in Vienna) - Being green is not a competitive advantage
- Short section on sustainability on their website - Seminars on sustainability are organized - Short section on sustainability on their
- All information about green practices on the website
website
- Member of green travel booking platforms
Customers - Some customers do not care - often guests from - Change of tourists attitude towards - New target group: companies that work in the - Most business guests take green operations
Golf Region sustainability environment protection sector for granted
- Most business guests take green operations for - All guests actively participate in sustainability
granted (would not book if not green) - Young people love green, but will not pay for it
Vienna - No need for more government regulations - No need for more government regulations - No need for more government regulations - No need for more government regulations
- Too many rules and restrictions - Too many rules and restrictions - Most laws need to be updated - They voluntary want to do more for a healthy
- Focus on wrong problems - Waste management should be improved - Waste management should be improved environment
- Waste management should be improved - Should make the donation of food legal - Received support from the Austrians Energy Forum
for their photovoltaic system
Future Plans - Improve heating and AC system - Use the roof for beehives - Stay up to date with green fittings
- Change all bulbs to LED lights

Table 2 - Comparison between different hotels in Vienna

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The most important statements of the interviewed Viennese hotel experts are once
more described in the next seven subchapters including: Joint Programs,
Environmental Initiatives/Practices, Staff Training, Marketing, Customers, Hong Kong
and Future Plans. The subchapters titles are based on the structure of table 2.

The decision to participate in a green certification program or sustainable

development control systems illustrates a hotels business attitude towards an
ongoing sustainable operation development (Black & Crabtree, 2007). In the next
section the most important statements of the Viennese hotel experts are
summarized.

5.1.3.2.1 Joint Programs

None of the hotels that were interviewed apply ISO standards. Hotel Imperial has
joined a national classification programs with great success and has already received
the Umweltgtesiegel three times in a row.
Both Hotel Imperial and Sofitel Vienna follow their own hotel chains sustainability
standards. Hotel Imperial is obliged to send a sustainable report twice a year to the
Starwoods headquarters to prove that they have reached their short-term goals and
came closer to their long-term goals of reducing their energy consumption by 20%
and their water consumption by 30% within the next ten years. They are particularly
concentrating on energy and water saving measurements as these resources
account for the main operating costs. Sofitel Vienna obeys to the standards of their
hotel chain ACCOR. Their Earth Guest program consists of two parts, the EGO
project (for the social and health sector) and the ECO project (for the protection of
the environment). ACCORs success in sustainability is marked by receiving the first
place of Tomorrows Value Rating, which rates the largest hotel chains worldwide.
All interviewed hotel experts refuse to participate in ISO as they believe that it
requires too much time, effort and money. Ms. Michaela Reitterer, owner of Hotel
Stadthalle, adds that it is always difficult to certify a service comprising of many
employees. Instead she decides to focus on their employees by installing a tailored
quality assurance policy. However, they actively participate in Green Brands as
they believe that they will gain a marketing advantage through it. All other
certifications they received, such as the Blue Hotel Award, the TRIGOS sterreich,
OEGZ Sterne Award 2011, Klimaschutzpreis and others were actually never applied





for. Hotel Stadthalle sees its obtained certifications as a useful marketing tool and a
great way of promotion.
25hours Hotel has not joined any green classification programs as they are not
explicitly targeting green travellers and do not see possibilities to become entirely
green.
If a hotel does not participate in any classification programs it does not necessarily
mean that it is not sustainable. In order to clarify this statement, the individual
environmental practices of each interviewed hotel are summarized below.

5.1.3.2.2 Environmental Initiatives/Practices

All interviewed hotels try to improve their hotels resource management by limiting
their water and energy consumption and managing their waste more efficiently.
However, Hotel Imperial and 25hours Hotel see their first priority in social
sustainability. Imperial Hotel believes in supporting people in need by providing
education and guidance instead of only donating money. 25hours Hotel participates
in social projects at least once a year, e.g. this year they plan to organise an event in
order to collect money for the organisation Movember, an organisation that uses
donations to fight against prostate cancer. Sofitel is engaged in social programs as
well, through the Earth Guest program of ACCOR, which supports the fight against
AIDS. The ACCOR Earth Guest program also covers environmental protection
programs, of which one aims to increase the number of trees in the Vienna woods.

On the contrary, Hotel Stadthalle has barely joined any social programs. Instead,
they have decided to spend more time and money for protecting the nature. Apart
from basic functional fittings (key cards, water restrictors, LED lighting, etc.) Hotel
Stadthalle has a photovoltaic system and is built as a passive house (investment
costs: 5.3 million Euro) that stores energy in a way that no heating or air
conditioning is necessary. Furthermore they are offering only bio-products to their
guests that are delivered on the shortest distance possible.

Sofitel Vienna also included renewable technologies in their construction planning

e.g. solar panels for water heating. Moreover their energy system has an interface
with their hotel reservation software in a way that the hotel room is supplied with
energy only after the guest checked in to the hotel.

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Both, 25hours Hotel and Imperial Hotel are convinced of LED-lighting although they
believe that the luminous colour it is not suitable for all rooms of their hotel.
Imperial further changed their centralized heating and cooling system from a two-
pipe system (which can cool or heat only) to a more energy sufficient (does not mix
cold and hot water) and more consumer friendly (can be cooled and heated at the
same time) four-pipe system. 25hours Hotel does not have any special heating
system and they did not include any renewable technologies during their
construction. They focus on waste reduction through using reusable shampoo and
soap-dispensers. Moreover they have up to 80% second hand furniture in the hotel
and only use bio-cleaning products. Hotel Stadthalle and 25hours Hotel offer bicycle
for rent to their guests and therefore support a car free environment. Hotel
Stadthalle even reduces the room price by 10% whenever the guest arrives with a
bike or travels by train.

All these changes in a hotel operation can only be achieved efficiently if there is a
clear internal communication of the sustainable strategy and the resulting green
procedures in a hotel. Therefore all hotel experts claim that it is inevitable to involve
and educate all staff members in terms of sustainability. The different opinions are
summarized in the following subchapter.

5.1.3.2.3 Staff Training

At Hotel Imperial, Sofitel and Hotel Stadthalle employees are supervised and
continually trained on more efficient resource usage. 25hours Hotel only trains
employees on environmentally friendly workflows at the beginning of their
employment and is convinced that employees follow green workflows voluntarily
thereafter. The general manager of Hotel Imperial, Mr. Christandl, believes that
most employees do not really care about being sustainable and that is why they
have to be reminded constantly. Hotel Imperial organizes together with their
employees a voluntary money-collecting event for UNICEF every year. Every
Starwood hotel can freely decide which event they want to conduct together with
their employees in order to support either the local community or an international
organisation.

Ms. Reitterer of Hotel Stadthalle is convinced that training employees is the most
important task to fulfill. In her opinion, sustainable training is a never-ending process

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and it is indispensible that all employees truly live a green life. They have to
understand the importance of the environment and gain a thorough knowledge in
order to judge what helps the environment and what destroys it. This is the reason
why Hotel Stadthalle does not have any services outsourced; all knowledge is
provided by their own employees through ongoing seminars and training events.

In addition to all cost saving effects of green operations, some hotels want to further
gain competitive advantage through green marketing initiatives. The hotel experts
have different opinions regarding this topic, which is discussed in the following
chapter.

5.1.3.2.4 Marketing
Hotel Imperial, Sofitel Vienna and 25hours Hotel do not specifically promote their
environmental programs as the managers believe that most guests already take
sustainability for granted. According to their experiences, those guests who are
especially interested in the hotels sustainable initiatives will inquire about them
personally. The general manager of Hotel Imperial and the PR manager of Sofitel
both claim that being green is no longer a marketing advantage to attract customers.
However, neglecting green initiatives can be seen as a disadvantage. Mr. Christandl
further explains that it is more valuable and efficient to change the attitude of
employees rather than customers, as employees can be more heavily influenced.

Hotel Stadthalle perfectly uses its green movement as a marketing tool. As this hotel
is the first zero energy balanced hotel in Vienna it is of great interest to the media
and the entire tourism industry. They even organize seminars for companies that are
interested in entering the green path or those working in a business that is related to
sustainability. Ms. Reitterer is convinced that her green marketing is so successful
due to the fact that she truly lives green, not only in her daily business but also in
her private life. Hotel Stadthalle has also joined green travel platforms such as
Vertrglich Reisen, Fair Reisen etc.

The 25hours Hotel does not deliberately promote their few sustainable initiatives, as
they are not yet sufficient for positioning the hotel as a sustainable hotel in
consumers minds. Ms. Holzer thinks rather economically, meaning that they

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implement green initiatives only if they can be included into daily business without
hindering the day-to-day operations.

Before starting a green marketing campaign it is necessary to define a target market

and to predict the change in customer behaviour as well as their buying decisions
(Reid & Bojanic, 2010). In the next subchapter, the customers awareness of the
need for a sustainable industry is evaluated through statements made in the in-
depth interviews.

5.1.3.2.5 Customers
Mr. Christandl from the Imperial Hotel said that some of his guests refuse even to
listen to his front office employees when they start to talk about the sustainable
movement in the hotel. These guests are often coming from Golf Regions, as they
are not yet used to dealing with limitations of certain resources. The owner of Hotel
Stadthalle also perceives Arabic travellers being less concerned with energy saving,
but she believes that they are more careful than Austrians when it comes to water
usage.

In general, all hotels agreed that the majority of business guests perceive it as a
standard that a hotel participates in environmental protection activities. Sofitel
Vienna states that this opinion is even true for the luxury tourism segment.
Furthermore the young generations awareness is growing, but there are doubts
that they would pay a premium for staying in a green hotel. According to the Mr.
Christandl of Imperial Hotel, many companies would not book a hotel that does not
care about the environment, but on the other hand approximately 10% of them are
willing to pay a premium for staying in a sustainable hotel. This being said, it is
interesting to note that none of the interviewed hotels had to raise room prices due
to the high investments in sustainability.

The 25hours Hotel is convinced that there is already a visible movement towards
sustainability within their guest segment of 20 to 50 year old travellers. Hotel
Stadthalle found a new target group in companies that are working in the business
field of green development. These business travellers prefer to stay in an eco-
friendly hotel in order to emphasize their own green attitude.

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This green customer movement may be further enhanced through active
participation and support of the local government. The interviewed hotel experts
were asked about their own need and perception of the government initiatives such
as provision of laws and standards for protecting the environment. Their answers
are summarized below.

5.1.3.2.6 Vienna
Hotel Imperial, 25hours Hotel and Sofitel Vienna do not feel a need for more
government-driven environmental regulations, as there are already too many rules
and restrictions in force. Hotel Stadthalle claims that there are restrictive
construction rules and as the green movement is rather new, a lot of regulations and
laws need to be newly invented. However, they were very satisfied to receive
financial support form the Austrians Energy Forum for the construction of the
photovoltaic system. According to Mr. Christandl, the Austrian government focuses
unnecessarily on problems that are not even an issue in other countries. He believes
that a sustainable movement must come from inside the company and must be
authentically believed in, because this is the only way to achieve valuable changes.
One main area of improvement in Vienna is waste management, because the sorted
waste is not kept separated by the governmentally owned waste disposal company.
Furthermore, the 25hours Hotel claims that the government should find better ways
to recycle or even reuse food leftovers. In Austria it is due to the strict food
regulations almost impossible to donate food to charity organizations or people in
need.

However, as sustainable development is still a young topic in the hospitality industry

and new technologies are enhancing this development rapidly, continuous
improvement is necessary and future plans are developed as below.

5.1.3.2.7 Future Plans

Hotel Imperial is planning long-term investments in LED lighting and is aiming for
improvements of the hotels heating and cooling systems to safe energy. Hotel
Stadthalle aims to continue using state-of-the-art technology and to expand their
current market position through developing the first green budget hotel. The
25hours Hotel wants to use its limited space on the roof, which is currently unused,
for beehives in order to produce their own honey. The recently opened Sofitel

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Vienna is still in the evaluation process of identifying improvement areas and will
define future plans accordingly. For more detailed interview responses, please refer
to appendix 3.

In the next chapter the previously identified differences and similarities of hotels in
Vienna and Hong Kong are selected and put in a table to get a cross-country
comparison between both cities (see table 3). Later these findings are described in
more detail in a full text summary.

All this is done in order to find out if the geographical locations and the cultural
backgrounds have an influence on hotel organizations handling of sustainable
issues.

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5.1.3.3 Comparison of Hotel Experts Opinions in Hong Kong and Vienna
Hotel Experts in Hong Kong in Vienna Category
opinions

main - Mainly participate in international - Mainly participate in national or Joined Programs

differences green programs e.g.: Earth Check own green programs

- Chillers produce the biggest - Heaters produce the biggest Environmental

portion of energy costs portion of energy costs practices
- No solar panels build up to now - Some hotels already installed
(lack of space) solar panels
- Role model for green operations: - Role model for green operations:
Hotel Nathan Road Novotel Boutique Hotel Stadthalle

- All hotels promote their green - Green operations are hardly Marketing
operations and attitude, but to promoted, only if the hotel is
different extents totally green
- Focus on high-tech gadgets in - Just convey green information if
guestrooms to convey green requested from the customers, no
thinking (iPad, screen, phones) displayed information

- Hong Kong has not enough green - Vienna has too many mandatory Cities
regulations, all are voluntary regulations and rules
... main - Almost none of the hotels apply ISO standards Joined Program
similarities - Staff training is essential and a good investment for becoming Staff Training
more sustainable

- The green movement is triggered by hotel operators cost saving Marketing

attitude
- The change to green operations does not effect the room prices

- Business travellers are perceived as the major target group for Customers
sustainable hotels
- Increasing guest interest in sustainability

- Problem with food waste handling & recycling of waste Cities

Table 3 - Cross-country comparison between Hong Kong and Vienna

In the following chapter the most important findings gained through the comparison
of hotels in Hong Kong and Vienna are explained in more detail.

First of all, all interviewed hotels, with the exception of the Langham Hotel, refused
to participate in the ISO classification scheme by arguing that ISO requires excessive
amounts of paperwork and time, which could be used more productively in other
areas. However, differences can be found in their opinions about other, more
suitable programs for the hospitality industry. In Hong Kong, most hotels have joined

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the international classification program Earth Check as it provides advanced
possibilities of international benchmarking. On the contrary, Viennese hotels are
more likely to rely on national and self-established programs, as they are perceived
as more appropriate for the hospitality industry.

In general, hotels in Hong Kong and Vienna face different challenges in the course of
becoming more sustainable due to the different climate zones and weather
conditions. Hong Kong for example struggles with growing energy consumption
costs caused by their chillers, which are needed for the air conditioning systems. In
Vienna, a similar problem arises when it comes to heaters, which are especially
needed during cold winter months. While the average hotel in Vienna does not
possess air conditioners, most hotels in Hong Kong do not have heaters. However,
some hotels in Vienna, mainly newly build ones, have installed solar panels on their
roofs. In Hong Kong, most of the hotels are located in skyscrapers, which do not
have enough roof surface space to build sufficient solar systems. The lack of space is
the only argument that hinders hotel constructors to install solar panels in Hong
Kong, even though they have enough hours of sunshine every day. In Hong Kong, the
Novotel Nathan Road Kowloon is a pioneer in sustainability, whereas in Vienna it is
the zero energy balanced Hotel Stadthalle. However, there is no comparable hotel in
Hong Kong that is able to keep up with the state-of-the-art sustainability of Hotel
Stadthalle.

All green initiatives and programs would not work efficiently if employees were not
involved in the sustainable development process. Therefore, all interviewed hotels
see great importance in the training of employees on energy and water saving,
waste handling and pollution issues.

All hotels answered the question about the real drive behind sustainable
development sincerely by stating that the main reason is to decrease costs.
According to Hyatt Hong Kong, money is always an issue when it comes to
implementing new sustainable fittings; therefore new projects need to pay back for
themselves. The preservation of the environment as an argument to undergo a
costly and time-consuming sustainable development is usually not sufficient.

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Room prices were not affected in any hotels by the implementation of sustainable
fittings. Almost all interviewed hotels in Hong Kong aim to not only save costs, but
also to gain competitive advantage through green marketing initiatives. That is the
reason why they all provide information on their sustainable initiatives on their
websites The Langham Group and some other hotels in Hong Kong further promote
sustainability through high technology items, like iPad, phones or screens in the
guestrooms that display information on the hotels green initiatives. In Vienna,
however, all interviewed hotels, except for the Hotel Stadthalle, do not especially
promote their environmental programs, as they believe that most guests already
take being green for granted. The general manager of Hotel Imperial and the PR
manager of Sofitel, both say that sustainability does not constitute a marketing
advantage to attract customers; it can only pose a disadvantage if a hotel does not
include sustainability in its operations. This is why many Viennese hotels do not
emphasize sustainable initiatives on their websites.

Sustainable marketing initiatives should be primarily targeted towards business

travellers, as all interviewed hotels are convinced that business and corporate
travellers have the highest demand for sustainability. Most of the hotel executives
interviewed in both Vienna and Hong Kong also added that the customers origin
and customs play a large role in how they deal with sustainability issues. According
to Disney Land Resorts Hong Kong, Europeans are very interested in sustainability
but Chinese are less so. Mr. Christandl claims that some guests, especially those
from the Golf Region, are often not interested in sustainability. Ms. Reitterer, owner
of Hotel Stadthalle, also states that Arabic travelers are not very concerned with
saving energy. However, Ms. Reitterer did note that, compared to Austrians, Arabic
guests are very prudent with their water consumption.

All interviewed hotels claim that the governments in both cities, Vienna and Hong
Kong, are facing challenges and unsolved problems in waste handling and recycling.
Viennas governmentally owned waste disposal company is not able to keep the
waste, which has already been separated by hotels, separated in the end. In Hong
Kong there is no recycling plant at a governmental level, which is the reason why
hotels pay companies to ship all recyclable material to China for processing. 25hours
Hotel in Vienna and a lot of hotels in Hong Kong claim that the government should

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find better ways to recycle or even reuse food leftovers. The manager of Hyatt Hong
Kong explained that there are 3300 tons of food waste per day in Hong Kong and
200 tons could be easily reused to help people in need, which is still feasible at this
moment in time. All in all, the hotel managers in Hong Kong perceive that the HKSAR
government does not set satisfactory regulations for an overall green development.
Most regulations are on a voluntary basis, as the government tries to maintain a free
economy approach to attract foreign companies to invest in Hong Kong. In Vienna it
is the other way around, the government sets too narrow rules and restrictions.
Furthermore, according to Ms. Reitterer, the old regulations and laws need to be
updated in order to achieve an overall nationwide sustainable development.

After analysing, summarizing and comparing the data gained through all interviews
conducted in Hong Kong and Vienna, it became clear that there are some differences
in sustainable attitudes between the two cities. This can be seen especially in the
way hotels promote their green initiatives. In Hong Kong they are more likely to
pride themselves with green practices than in Vienna, where it is taken for granted
to show environmental and social responsibility.

3
2
1
0
Similarines
Dierences Dierences

Similarines

Figure 8 - Differences and Similarities between hotels in Hong Kong and Vienna

However, through the in-depth interviews no significant results are found that
indicate a strong cultural dependence in a hotels green attitude.

In figure 8 it becomes visible that there are seven main differences between the two
cities in the categories: Joined Programs, Environmental Practices, Marketing and

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Government, but also the same number of similarities. Therefore, only broad and
precautious conclusions about the findings can be made.

Hong Kong was indeed slower than Austria in terms of adapting a sustainable path.
Nevertheless, the sustainable movement has taken off in Hong Kong, and it is likely
that they will soon equal or even outperform the Austrian hospitality industry
through continually introducing new green technologies. This development is
reinforced by worldwide criticism of China's polluting industries, which is a viable
explanation of why Hong Kong is more enthusiastic than Austria about their green
initiatives. They are just more often asked for it.

5.1.4 Limitations of This Study and Further Research

Qualitative research has a few undeniable disadvantages that have to be taken into
account when conducting in-depth expert interviews (Marshall & Rossman, 2010). In
this study a few limitations have to be outlined, triggered by the special
characteristic of qualitative research techniques.

First of all, it has to be mentioned that due to a lack of financial support, two
students were responsible for conducting the expert interviews instead of qualified
researchers. Therefore, some question may have been posed in the wrong way, like
for example including personal opinions.

In addition to the limitation caused by insufficient monetary resources, it further had

to deal with cut backs in the choice of appropriate experts who were willing to
participate in interviews regarding green issues. In Hong Kong it appeared to be easy
to get appointments with experts in the hotel industry. Thus, it was expected that in
Vienna it would be the same. However, in Vienna, much more effort, time and
energy were needed to get the chance to record interviews. Therefore, it was
decided to conduct only four interviews in Vienna, although six interviews were
given in Hong Kong.

Moreover, the probability of respondents errors within the qualitative research

study has to be taken into account. These errors refer to the dishonest answers of
respondents, who tend to constantly promote their business, independent of the

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research topic at hand, aiming to always be perceived as an industry role model
(Weisberg, 2005). Hotel experts, who are pretending to be very sustainable and
seriously care about the environment, could have caused a respondents error in this
study.

Within this study the attempt was made to interview hotel managers with diverse
attitudes toward green issues. Unfortunately, the selection area of available hotel
experts was limited by the low response rate of suitable interview partners. Hence,
for further research in the field of sustainability in the hotel industry, it would be
more beneficial to create sup-sample groups of experts with different levels of
green awareness, in order to set the scene for different opinions. This could help
in discovering those segments of the hotel industry that are more open and faster in
adapting sustainable hotel practices than others.

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5.2 Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is based on the collection of numerical data and aims to

determine relationships between variables by means of statistical techniques. It is
used to test hypotheses and helps, if done properly and with a sufficient amount of
data, to explain phenomena and to draw conclusions from a specific dataset to an
entire population (Murray Thomas, 2003; Balnaves & Caputi, 2001, Muijs, 2011). In
quantitative research studies, hypotheses are defined in a first step. Once these are
established, a questionnaire is designed taking general rules to increase the
response rate, the response quality and the response accuracy into consideration. A
precice description of these steps can be found in various existing literature (Brace,
2008; Schmidt & Hollensen, 2006; Hair et al., 2007; Marshall & Rossman, 2010;
Patton, 2002).

5.2.1 Hypotheses

Based on the results of the qualitative research (see 5.1.2), hypotheses were
established, which were verified or falsified in a further step through the use of
quantitative research methods. The most significant hypotheses for this research
study are the following:

1. Hotel room prices have the strongest influence on consumers buying

decisions.
2. A hotels sustainable initiative has a positive impact on consumer booking
decisions.
3. Hotel customers believe that the main reason for hotels to become
sustainable is the reduction of operating costs.

In the next chapter the two methods used for testing these hypotheses are
described.

5.2.2 Survey

5.2.2.1 Questionnaire Design

A questionnaire needs to be carefully designed to facilitate thorough coding and
analysis and to insure that answers produce valuable data sets (Brace, 2008). The
main distribution tool used for this quantitative research study was the Internet,
whereby the link to the online questionnaire was sent via emails and through an

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especially created Facebook group. These methods were selected because a wide
range of people in various geographical areas can be reached. Also, it allows data to
be returned faster and it is less expensive than other survey methods such as
telephone, mail or face to face. Furthermore, the responses were gathered in
electronic form and automatically entered into the statistical software, SPSS. In
order to enable the use of suitable software for the research analysis procedure,
closed questions were used exclusively (Schmidt & Hollensen, 2006). The
questionnaire was divided into the following five broad sections:

1. Travel Behavior
2. Conjoint Analysis
3. Attitude towards sustainability and green hotels
4. New Ecological Paradigm (NEP)
5. Demographics

The online questionnaire was designed to start with a short introduction, informing
the respondents about the purpose of the questionnaire, the general topic and the
approximate duration for completion. Thereafter the previous travel behavior was
diagnosed with the help of general questions concerning purpose, duration,
accommodation, companion and money spent during a trip. In a further question
self-perceived booking behavior was identified with a simple question asking what
the respondent first looks at when booking a hotel with the response options: price,
location, environmental friendliness, reputation and consumer reviews or star
rating. However, this question was only used to discover what respondents believe is
important for them when booking a hotel. In order to test these received answers, a
conjoint analysis was established in a further step.
Conjoint analysis has become one of todays most widely used marketing research
tools. It goes beyond simple surveys, providing a more realistic approach to
understanding customers attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. (Orme, 2009, p. 7)
A conjoint analysis provides the possibility for researchers to discover different
levels of utility values a consumer attaches to the attributes of given objects during a
buying decision process. Participants of a conjoint analysis are asked to select one
hypothetical product or service of a given choice set. All possible products or
services are described by specific profiles that consist of the same predetermined
key characteristics but have systematic differences in their strengths. In the end of

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the study the researcher receives data about the utility values of each characteristic
within the different profiles. The characteristics of the most chosen and most
preferred product profiles have the highest customer utility value and therefore
have high influence on a consumers buying decision (Parasuraman, Grewal, &
Krishnan, 2006).
Generally speaking a conjoint analysis has five main functions:
1) It is a measurement technique of buying tradeoffs and products attribute values.
2) It is an analytical technique that tries to predict consumer reactions to new
products or services.
3) It is a segmentation technique for identifying and forming consumer groups with
similar values.
4) It is a simulation technique for gathering new product or service ideas in a
competitive market.
5) It is an optimization technique for discovering product or service profiles that
maximize a specific outcome measure, like for example return on investment or
sales figure shares (Wierenga, 2008, pp. 26-27).

Taking this theory into account, the designed questionnaire asked respondents to
put themselves in a booking scenario by asking which hotel out of four possibilities
they would choose for a weekend trip to Barcelona. Each option had five
characteristics including the star category, the overall rating on TripAdvisor, the
possession of environmental certifications, the use of organic products and the daily
room price. Respondents were then asked to choose one of the four options as a
most preferred hotel, and another one as a least preferred hotel (see figure 9). In
the end respondents were also asked whether or not they would book the hotel,
which they have ranked as most preferred. This procedure was repeated fourteen
times in order to receive meaningful results.

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Figure 9 - Conjoint Analysis in the Questionnaire

After the general travel and booking behavior section including the conjoint analysis
has been completed, a more sustainability-focused section started, with questions
concerning the benefits of a green hotel for both the respondent (protect
environment, be more socially responsible, eat fresh and healthy foods, have
reduced prices, etc.) as well as the hotels itself (to cut costs, marketing, certificate,
government regulations, etc.).

The next section was concentrating on the social aspect of sustainability and
whether or not respondents think that being sustainable is the right thing to do
because society asks for it. For this, questions were asked such as if family and
friends think that the respondent should stay at a green hotel when travelling.

This study also adopted existing and already widely tested questioning models such
as a revised New Ecological Paradigm Scale and other questions from already
conducted scientific studies (Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Emmet Jones, 2000; Han,
Hsu, & Sheu, 2010; Robinot & Giannelloni, 2010). The New Environmental Paradigm
(NEP) Scale by Dunlap and Van Liere (1978) is a well-known tool for measuring
proenvironmental orientation. It is mainly focusing on beliefs about humanitys
ability to upset the balance of nature, the existence of limits to growth for human
societies, and humanitys right to rule over the rest of nature. (Dunlap et al., 2000,
p.427) The questions used in the questionnaire are shown in figure 10 below, which

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had the purpose of investigating the ecological consciousness of the respondents
and their perception of environmental problems.

Figure 10 - New Ecological Paradigm Questions (Dunlap et al., 2000)

After the NEP section has been filled out, the questionnaire concluded with some
demographic questions and thanked the respondents for their participation. The
complete questionnaire can be found in appendix 4.

A well-designed questionnaire is pivotal for receiving meaningful results. However,

this must be combined with a meaningful and appropriate selection of candidates,
without which a survey cannot succeed. This selection process is described in the
next subchapter.

5.2.2.2 Selection of Candidates

Once a method for collecting data is chosen, a sample, which best represents the
target population, needs to be defined. According to Hair et al. (2007), a sample
consists of target population elements, which are actually available to be used in the
research study. The goal is to select an appropriate sample, which allows you to

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generalize gathered information from the sample to the target population as a
whole. This allows us to make inferences and judgments about a target population
as a whole from a sample (Hair et al., 2007; Schmidt & Hollensen, 2006).

In this study the target population is broadly defined as this quantitative research
was directed towards any group of people of all age groups, education, gender,
cultural and ethnic background, income, profession, travel frequency and purpose.
This means that the study group was representing the general traveling population.
However, the sample was constricted in a way to only include people who have
taken a trip for leisure purposes in the past two years. For this purpose, a skip-logic
was incorporated in the beginning of the questionnaire, which led unqualified
participants immediately to the end of the questionnaire. However, the social
networking platform Facebook, which was used for distribution, is largely dominated
by younger generations. This resulted in the actual sample being biased, as only a
few respondents were over the age of 50. The online distribution was a form of
convenience sampling, because people were contacted that were easily accessible to
the researchers. This is significant because it implies non-probability sampling,
meaning that some elements of the target population are automatically not
considered in the sampling process. For example, people that do not use the
Internet frequently are largely not accounted for and their absence can lead to a lack
of generalizability (Schmidt & Hollensen, 2006).

Once the sample was selected and contacted, the survey was finally conducted. This
process is described in detail in the next subchapter.

5.2.2.3 Survey Process

The quantitative survey was conducted, as aforementioned, by means of an online
questionnaire. People accessed this online questionnaire via a link and then had to
click from one page to another with the help of a next button. The survey was
carried out in 2 months, precisely between December 16, 2011 and February 16,
2012. After the surveying period was completed, the response rates and the sample
profiles were analyzed, which are described in the next subchapter.

5.2.2.4 Response Rate and Sample Profile

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The response rate, also known as the percentage return rate, is of importance for a
studys reliability as it describes how many representatives of a predefined sample
have actually participated (Babbie, 2010). In this study, around 1740 people received
access to the questionnaire via email or a Facebook group, which has been especially
created for this project. Out of those recipients, 510 people clicked on the given link.
As the first part of the questionnaire was very repetitive, a high number of people
dropped the questionnaire during the completing process. Altogether 230 people
have completed the entire questionnaire, which corresponds to an achieved
response rate of 13.2%, out of which 145 were female and 85 were male
respondents. A low response rate may lead to a non-response bias, meaning that
people from the sample who have not responded to the questionnaire are very likely
to have similar attributes which may be significant for the study but are thus, not
included in the study (Babbie, 2010).

The average respondent needed 1507.77

seconds, which corresponds to about 25
minutes. Respondents who needed less than
6 minutes were excluded from the study, as
they were not seen as reliable. Checking for
duplicate IP addresses further proved the
reliability of respondents. Out of 230 surveys
completed, 222 different IP addresses were Figure 11 Age distribution of the sample

used.

The respondents ages

ranged from 17 to 72
years, whereby 68.8%
of respondents were
between 20 and 25
years old (see figure
11). Almost 50% of Table 4 Sample profile

respondents had a monthly discretionary income ranging from 0 to 50 and only 3%

had more than 2000 available per month after all regular living expenses have been
paid.

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When it comes to the occupation of the respondents the data shows that 60% were
studying/training, 33.5% were employed and 9% were retired (see table 4).

Furthermore, 43 % had a completed university or college degree. The use of the

Internet as a distribution
tool for the questionnaire
facilitated reaching
respondents from 35
different countries
around the world.
Nevertheless, Austrians
still formed a majority
with 60% (see figure 12).
For more information on
the respondents profiles,
please refer to appendix Figure 12 - Chart of different nationalities participating in the study

5. A.

41.3% of respondents listed hotels as their preferred accommodation during their

holidays, followed by staying with friends/relatives and staying at hostels. In regard
to travel expenditure, 57% of respondents are spending between 0-50, which is
similar to the spending on activities with 55.7%. Most spending during holidays was
on transportation, with only 19.1% spending between 0-50 and 27.4% spending
more than 150 (see table 5). For more detail on the respondents choice of
accommodation and expenditure, please refer to appendix 5.B.

Table 5 - Preferred accommodation and expenditure when travelling

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5.2.3 Results

Surprisingly, the majority of people perceive the use of renewable energy sources as
the main characteristic of a green hotel (88.7%), followed by green business
operations (80.4%) and green materials used in the construction process (73.9%).
Significantly less importance is attached to the hotels possession of eco certificates
(69.6%). This phenomenon could be explained by the fact that there are too many
diverse certificates existing as sustainability measures for hotels, which are often
seen as untrustworthy and are only rarely communicated. Renewable energy
sources, however, are often widely communicated through media (e.g. Stadthalle)
(see appendix 5.E).

When it comes to a
hotels reason for
adopting sustainable
strategies and
operations, 81.7% agree
that those efforts are
made because of a
hotels green attitude.
Figure 13 - Perceived reasons for hotels to become sustainable
Yet surprisingly, only 29.1%
believe that cutting costs is the primary motivation (see figure 13). This falsifies the
previously made assumption that the reduction of operating costs is perceived as
the primary reason (see hypotheses 3). For more detailed tables, please refer to
appendix 5.F.

In response to the question of what a stay at a green hotel enables their guests, the
majority believe that it allows guests to eat fresh and healthy foods, be more socially
responsible and protect the environment. Yet, the majority did not believe that
green hotels have reduced prices. Respondents even perceived green hotels as
expensive (67.8%) and that a lot of time and effort is needed to find green hotels
(67%). For more detailed tables, please refer to appendix 5.G and 5.I.

Most respondents (48.4%) are not seeing themselves as being influenced by their
families, friends or colleagues in the decision to stay at a green hotel. 89.6% of

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respondents say that they would participate in sustainable practices recommended
by hotels they are staying in (e.g. reusing towels) (see appendix 5.H).

The need for hotels to become more environmentally friendly is emphasized by the
fact that 87.7% of respondents agree that hotels should support the preservation of
the environment. 50% of respondents believed that hotels are essentially
contributing to the negative impacts on the environment, while 39.1% remained
neutral (see appendix 5.J).

5.2.3.1 New Ecological Paradigm (NEP)

In order to retrieve information about the participants general perception of
environmental problems, the answers to the aforementioned New Ecological
Paradigm Scale (NEP) is analyzed (see figure 6).

This analysis shows that 86.9% of respondents think that humans are severely
abusing the earth and 72.2% believed that this abuse will lead to disastrous
consequences. Also, a majority believe that despite our special abilities, humans are
still subject to the laws of nature (87.4%). Further, 73.9% believe that if humankind
continues on their present course, we will soon experience a major environmental
catastrophe. Only a minority believes that the balance of nature is strong enough to
cope with the impacts of modern industrial nations (16.5%) or that the so-called
ecological crisis facing humankind has been greatly exaggerated (20%). Similarly,
only 21.4% agree that humans will eventually learn enough about how nature works
to be able to control it, 20% say that humans have the right to modify the natural
environment to suit their needs and 13.5% go even further by believing that humans
were meant to rule over the rest of nature. However, a rather big percentage of
54.3% agrees that the earth has plenty of natural resources, but we must learn to
take advantage of them.

On the contrary, 55.7% believe that we are approaching the limit of the number of
people the earth can support and another 86.9% agree that humans are severely
abusing the earth (see table 6). This clearly shows a trend towards sustainability and
that the awareness of the need for sustainable measures is already high and must be
taken seriously (Dunlap et al., 2000). For a more detailed NEP analysis, please refer
to appendix 5.K.

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MEAN
0.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0

Table 6 New Ecological Paradigm Frequency Distribution (Dunlap et al., 2000)

1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = neutral, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree

Although the above-mentioned results give a good overview of how consumers

perceive sustainability, the central question, if a hotels sustainability plays a pivotal
role in consumer booking choices, has not yet been answered. This issue will be
analyzed in the following subchapter by means of a general hotel booking question
and the more complex conjoint analysis.

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5.2.3.2 Consumer Behavior in a Choice Set Conjoint Analysis

In order to test the aforementioned hypothesis that hotel room prices have the
strongest influence on consumers buying decisions, respondents were first asked to
indicate, which factors they look at when booking a hotel: price, location,
environmental friendliness, reputation and consumer reviews or star rating. The
results below (see figure 14 and 15) show, as hypothesized, that price was always
indicated as a pivotal factor in booking decisions, which is followed by a hotels
location, its reputation and consumer reviews and its star rating. Environmental
friendliness was rarely chosen as an influence factor among respondents and most
people adopted a neutral position (see appendix 5.C and 5.D).

Figure 14 Frequencies of influencing factors on booking behavior

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Figure 15 - 5 Factors perceived to be influencing consumer buying behavior

This result verifies the hypothesis that hotel room prices have the strongest
influence on consumers buying decisions. However, these results are not entirely
significant, as consumer beliefs of how they behave and what they actually look at in
a booking decision may vary.
This is the reason why a conjoint analysis has been carried out, which is known to be
a more accurate tool for assessing consumers behaviors and attitudes.
As aforementioned (see chapter 5.2.2.1), for the conjoint analysis the five
considered characteristics within a hotels profile included the hotels star category,
the overall rating on TripAdvisor, the possession of environmental certifications, the
use of organic products and the daily room price.
These five attributes were shaped to sixteen different hotel profiles, forming the
survey choice set. The description of the sixteen choice options can be seen below
(figure 16).

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Worst
rated

Best
rated

Figure 16 - 16 hotel profiles used for the conjoint analysis

In order to find out which of the given hotel profiles are chosen the most, a cross
table is created by using the statistic software SPSS. The 16 hotel profiles are taken
as the dependent variables and the best and worst ranks build the independent
variables. The resulting cross tabulations can be found below (see table 7).

BWRank*Profile Cross tabulation

BW Profile Total
Rank
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

best 676 143 23 25 51 518 84 546 29 150 310 706 563 35 282 31 4172

Betw. 325 734 697 338 432 483 658 465 432 762 690 300 429 524 662 413 8344

worst 30 154 317 674 555 27 280 29 593 150 48 48 71 484 101 611 4172

Total 1031 1031 1037 1037 1038 1028 1022 1040 1054 1062 1048 1054 1063 1043 1045 1055 16688
Table 7 - Frequency of hotel profiles being chosen

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Table 7 indicates that hotel profile number 12 is chosen the most, by receiving the
best rating 706 times. A four to five star category, an excellent TripAdvisor rating
and a low price, but no green certification and no use of organic products
characterize this hotel. All these figures lead to the interpretation that people are
more likely to concentrate on factors that indicate better service and lower prices
than on green factors.

This resulting assumption becomes more precise by checking the characteristics of

the least chosen hotel profile, profile number 4. This profile is completely diverse to
the best-rated hotel profile number 12. Hotel number 4, although it charges high
room rates, only has an average star rating and an average rating on TripAdvisor.
Suprisingly it is environmental certifications and makes use of organic products.
These sustainable factors seem not strong enough to attract customers, who are
scared off by the too high room prices compared to their average quality ratings.
According to these results it may be concluded that the daily room price, the star-
and the TripAdvisor- rating have the highest effect on a customers buying behavior.
However, these cross tabulations cannot tell us if there is just one characteristic that
is very powerful and therefore cancels out the positive and negative effects of the
other characteristics. In order to get deeper insight a more precise analysis of the
given data has to be carried out. This is done by computing five individual crosstabs,
one for each characteristic and later checking their power and significance
accordingly. For more detailed tables, please refer to appendix 5.L.

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The first cross tabulation is computed for the characteristic hotel star certification
level as the dependent variable, and best/worst rank as the independent variable
(see table 8 and figure 17). From the figures in the crosstab and the bar chart below,
it becomes clear that 4/5 star hotels (57.4%) are slightly more often chosen than 3
star hotels (42.6%). Through the chi-square test (see appendix 5), which compares
statistical expected counts with actual figures; it is proven that this difference is
based on highly significant results (Sig. = 0.000).

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Stars 3* Count 1778 2442 4220

Expected Count 2110.0 2110.0 4220.0

% within Stars 42.1% 57.9% 100.0%

% within BWRank 42.6% 58.5% 50.6%

Adjusted Residual -14.5 14.5

4/5* Count 2394 1730 4124

Expected Count 2062.0 2062.0 4124.0

% within Stars 58.1% 41.9% 100.0%

% within BWRank 57.4% 41.5% 49.4%

Adjusted Residual 14.5 -14.5

Table 8 Cross tabulation with dependent variable Hotel Stars Figure 17 Cross tabulation with
dependent variable Hotel Stars

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A crosstab is also created for the characteristic hotel TripAdvisor rating as the
dependent variable, and the best/worst rank as the independent variable (see table
9 and figure 18). Survey participants could find either excellent or average rated
hotels. From the figures in the crosstab and the bar chart below it becomes visible
that excellent rated hotels (65.1%) are more often chosen than average rated hotels
(34.9%). This is an even bigger percentage difference than in the hotel star
characteristic, meaning that TripAdvisor rating seems to have more influence on a
guests buying decision than a hotel star certification. Through the chi-square test
(see appendix 5) it is proven that this difference is as well based on highly significant
results (Sig. = 0.000).

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Rating Excellen Count 2717 1574 4291

t rating Expected Count 2145.5 2145.5 4291.0

% within Rating 63.3% 36.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 65.1% 37.7% 51.4%

Adjusted Residual 25.0 -25.0

Average Count 1455 2598 4053

Figure 18 Cross tabulation with
rating Expected Count 2026.5 2026.5 4053.0 dependent variable Average Rating

% within Rating 35.9% 64.1% 100.0%

% within BWRank 34.9% 62.3% 48.6%

Adjusted Residual -25.0 25.0

Table 9 Cross tabulation with dependent variable Average Rating

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Another crosstab is carried out for the characteristic hotel environment
certification as the dependent variable, and best/worst rank as the independent
variable (see table 10 and figure 19). The figures in the crosstab and the bar chart
below indicate that there is a moderate difference in how often certified hotels are
chosen compared to not certified ones. Non-certified hotels are chosen 15.80% less
often than certified ones. Therefore it can be said that an excellent hotel TripAdvisor
rating seems to have more power on a customers buying decision than a green
certification. Through the chi-square test (see appendix 5), it is proven that this
difference is based on highly significant results (Sig. = 0.000).

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

not Count 1756 2475 4231

certified Expected Count 2115.5 2115.5 4231.0

% within Certif 41.5% 58.5% 100.0%

% within BWRank 42.1% 59.3% 50.7%

Adjusted Residual -15.7 15.7

certified Count 2416 1697 4113

Expected Count 2056.5 2056.5 4113.0 Figure 19 Cross tabulation

with dependent variable Eco-
% within Certif 58.7% 41.3% 100.0%
Certification
% within BWRank 57.9% 40.7% 49.3%

Adjusted Residual 15.7 -15.7

Table 10 Cross tabulation with dependent variable Eco-Certification

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Furthermore, a crosstab is created for the characteristic hotels use of organic
products as the dependent variable, and best/worst rank as the independent
variable (see table 11 and figure 20). The figures of the below crosstab and bar chart,
indicate that there is again a moderate difference between how often hotels are
chosen that do not use any organic products compared to those who do. Hotels that
use organic products are only 13.00% more often chosen than those hotels that do
not offer organic products. Within the green characteristics of a hotel, customers
seem to care less about organic products than about official environment
certifications. Through the chi-square test (see appendix 5) it is proven that this
difference is based on highly significant results (Sig. = 0.000).

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

organic Count 2357 1891 4248

Expected Count 2124.0 2124.0 4248.0

% within Organic 55.5% 44.5% 100.0%

% within BWRank 56.5% 45.3% 50.9%

Adjusted Residual 10.2 -10.2

not Count 1815 2281 4096

organic Expected Count 2048.0 2048.0 4096.0

% within Organic 44.3% 55.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 43.5% 54.7% 49.1%

Adjusted Residual -10.2 10.2

Figure 20 Cross tabulation with
Table 11 Cross tabulation with dependent variable Organic Food dependent variable Organic Food

Once more a crosstab is computed for the characteristic daily hotel room price as
the dependent variable, and best/worst rank as the independent variable (see table
12 and figure 21). Survey participants could find hotels that offer their rooms either
for 90, 120, 150 or 180 per night. The figures in the crosstab and the bar chart
below indicate that hotels with a daily room rate of 90 have been considerably
more often chosen than all other price categories. On average, in 60% of the 14
choice sets the respondents select the cheapest hotel. All in all it can be stated that
the higher the room prices of a hotel the less likely it gets selected by the survey
participants. However the biggest difference of selection percentage (of 36.4%) from

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one room price to the next lower room price is between 90 and 120. As there is a
significant negative relationship between room price and best-ranked hotels, the
room price seems like the most important influence factor on a tourists booking
decision. Through the chi-square test (see appendix 5), it is again shown that this
difference is based on highly significant results (Sig. = 0.000).

Crosstab
BWRank


best worst Total

Price 90 Count 2491 178 2669
Expected Count 1334.5 1334.5 2669.0
% within Price 93.3% 6.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 59.7% 4.3% 32.0%

Adjusted Residual 54.3 -54.3

120 Count 973 595 1568

Expected Count 784.0 784.0 1568.0

% within Price 62.1% 37.9% 100.0% Figure 21 - Crosstab with dependent
variable Room Price
% within BWRank 23.3% 14.3% 18.8%

Adjusted Residual 10.6 -10.6


150 Count 572 966 1538

Expected Count 769.0 769.0 1538.0

% within Price 37.2% 62.8% 100.0%

% within BWRank 13.7% 23.2% 18.4%

Adjusted Residual -11.1 11.1

180 Count 136 2433 2569

Expected Count 1284.5 1284.5 2569.0

% within Price 5.3% 94.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 3.3% 58.3% 30.8%

Adjusted Residual -54.5 54.5

Table 12 - Cross tabulation with dependent variable Room Price

All above-discussed crosstabs can give an idea of the possible power of the
individual hotel characteristics on a customers final purchase decision. In order to
see the differences in strength within all characteristics another statistical test is
necessary to reliably compare the outcomes and test their significance. Therefore, a

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linear regression of the five hotel characteristics as predictors/constants and the
hotels best and worst rank as the dependent variable is computed.
In the first tables of interest Model Summary (see table 13) the R-value indicated a
high percentage (73%) of correlation. Furthermore the R value shows that 53.3% of
the dependent variable (=best/worst hotel rank) can be explained by the predictors.

R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate

a
.730 .533 .533 .683

Table 13 - Model summary including R-value

The following table ANOVA gives the evidence that the multiple regression model
predicts the dependent variable significantly (can be seen in the Sig. column in table
14). This means that the given model is significantly valuable enough to predict the
outcome variable (=best/worst hotel rank). Furthermore, it is proven that the model
at hand is very useful for this statistical test.
b
ANOVA

Model Sum of
Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
a
1 Regression 4451.349 5 890.270 1906.945 .000

Residual 3892.651 8338 .467

Total 8344.000 8343

a. Predictors: (Constant), Price_dich, Organic, Certif_Twisted, Stars_Twisted, Rating

b. Dependent Variable: BWRank

Table 14 - ANOVA of Conjoint Analysis

In the next table Coefficients the details of each individual predictor is provided. It
can be stated that all the constants are significantly related to the model (see Sig.
column, below).
The standardized coefficients (see the Beta column in Table 15) are used to compare
the relative strengths of the different predictors. In this table it can be seen that the
constant price has the largest (.608) Beta coefficient and organic has the
smallest (0.117). This means a one standard deviation increase in price leads to
0.608 standard deviation increase in the dependent variable of Best/Worst Rank, if
all the other variables are held constant. The B column helps to formulate the
equation for the dependent variable best/worst rank: B/WRank = -1.979+

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.507+.235+.284+.421+1.216. Moreover, every predictors tolerance is > 0.1, as
required. This again strengthens the trustworthiness of the data, as it measures the
correlation between predictors. If the predictor variables would highly correlate with
each other it would cause problems in judging the relative contribution of each
constant. In this case the correlation is beneficially low. For more detailed tables,
please refer to appendix 5.M.
a
Coefficients

Model Unstandardized Standardized Collinearity

Coefficients Coefficients Statistics

B Std. Error Beta t Sig. Tolerance VIF

(Constant) -1.979 .052 -37.734 .000

Rating .507 .016 .253 32.380 .000 .914 1.095

Organic .235 .016 .117 15.083 .000 .924 1.083

Stars_Twisted .284 .016 .142 18.213 .000 .923 1.084

Certif_Twisted .421 .016 .210 26.999 .000 .922 1.085

Price_dich 1.216 .015 .608 80.698 .000 .986 1.014

Table 15 - Coefficient of each individual predictor

Through the analysis it can be stated that the linear regression model reliably
indicates that price has significantly the strongest influence on a customers hotel
booking decision, followed by TripAdvisor ratings, green certifications, star rating
and last by the use of organic products with the weakest influence. This, however,
verifies the hypothesis that hotels sustainable initiatives have a positive impact on
consumer booking decisions, especially when these initiatives are supported by
green certifications, which show a stronger influence than star ratings.

5.2.4 Limitations of This Study and Further Research

Researchers that take a quantitative research approach are confronted with

different and sometimes even bigger limitations than by carrying out qualitative
research. According to Michael Quinn Patton, There are no perfect evaluation
designs, only more and less useful ones. (Patton, 2002, p. 229).

The first limitation of the research study at hand is caused by the selection of just
one distribution channel. The Internet was the only medium used to distribute the
questionnaire among potential tourists. This way of distributing information

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automatically dismisses the main part of the older generations and people who are
not used to check their mails on a regular basis. Although this limitation is obvious
and known by researchers, for this study no hardcopies of the questionnaire are
spread. This decision is made, due to the lack of financial support and to avoid being
forced to manually convert handwritten information into useful data that can be
processed by a computer based statistics program. Like foreseen, this causes same
samples error. This could mean that the sampling approach at hand may not be
representative for the entire population, as it mainly reflects the opinion of students
(Weisberg, 2005). Hence, the predetermined hypothesis regarding the dependence
between age and environmentally awareness, e.g. the younger generation is
keener about environmentally friendly practices, couldnt be tested with the
generated data.

Moreover it was necessary to cope with a nonresponse error during the study. This
bias is caused by people who are invited to take the survey, but actually do not
participate (Weisberg, 2005). In order to minimize this kind of error, the
questionnaire was posted on Facebook five times within a timeframe of 3 months.
In the end around 40% of the people who received the access to the survey, filled in
the entire questionnaire. This response rate was achieved mainly through
interviewing people that have a private or professional relationship to the
researcher.

For further research on the consumers attitude towards green practices and the
influence on their buying behavior, it is recommended to work with a research
sample that covers all age levels. This approach could help in determining current
market trends and future developments of sustainable products and services.

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6 Conclusion
There is evidence for a worldwide trend of hotels increasingly focusing on strategies
for environmentally friendly and sustainable operations in the long term. However,
strategies vary tremendously according to local conditions, e.g. hotels in Hong Kong
and Vienna face completely different challenges in the course of their individual
environmental practices due to the different climate zones, governmental
regulations, space conditions and technical fittings opportunities. However, all
hotels that participated in the in-depth interviews agree that the main drive behind
a sustainable development is the decrease of operating costs. A trend towards
receiving eco-certificates is identified, whereby most Hong Kong hotels join the
Earth Check program and most Viennese hotels rely on national or self-established
programs. A further difference is identified in the approach of promoting
sustainability in both cities. Hotels in Hong Kong are trying to gain competitive
advantage by providing detailed information on their sustainable initiatives for their
customers, whereas hotels in Vienna do not necessarily consider sustainability as an
explicit tool for attracting customers, but more importantly as a factor that
customers already expect. Another significant difference, which has to be
underlined, is the way national governments deal with green issues. Hong Kong is
said to have too vague regulations, whereas Vienna is perceived as too strict, old-
fashioned and narrow-minded. However, the in-depth interviews regarding a hotels
overall green attitude do not demonstrate any significant cultural dependence.

Concerning the quantitative research, the conjoint analysis shows clearly that price
has the significantly strongest influence on a consumers hotel booking decision.
Additionally, this analysis further indicated that eco-certificates have already
outperformed star ratings in terms of influencing booking decisions. This implies that
hotels should indicate whether or not they have eco-certificates as this has become
a weak, but yet decisive factor in the consumers hotel choice. Consequently, a
majority of respondents believe that hotels adopt sustainable strategies because of
the hotels green attitude. This is not surprising, but in contrast to the findings of the
in-depth interviews. Only 29.1% believe that cutting costs is the primary motivation.
Furthermore, a significant majority believes that hotels because of their contribution
to the negative impacts on the environment are clearly obliged to support the

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preservation of the environment, which speaks once more for the implementation
of sustainable practices in hotels.

Furthermore, the results retrieved from the New Ecological Paradigm Scale indicate
a high overall concern of the society about the environment, a high awareness that
the environment needs to be protected, as resources are limited, and a high
apprehension that humans are severely abusing the environment. This shows once
again that consumers are increasingly valuing sustainable initiatives and a shift
towards an ecological worldview is already occurring.

It can be concluded that the consumers awareness of the need for becoming
green is already very high. Unfortunately, the customers environmental concerns
are still too low to compete with attractive low prices and do not have the power to
positively effect their booking decision for green hotels. Nevertheless, companies
should get proactive and start today to take sustainable measures in order to
compete in an increasingly environmentally friendly market place of the future.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: Interview Guidelines

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Appendix 2: Expert Interview Results Hong Kong

For the qualitative research study numerous interviews have been conducted in order to
receive the necessary background information for this thesis. The information retrieved is in
detail described below.

Interviewees List

th
Ms. Carmen Ng, Environmental Manager for Langham Hotels International Group (Wed, 20
April, 2011 at the corporate office: Office Tower, Langham Place, 8 Argyle Street, Mongkok,
Tel: (852) 3552 3815, Fax: (852) 3552 3900, carmen.ng@langhamhotels.com)

Mr. Jor Fan, Environmental Management System Manager at Langham Place Hotel (Wed,
02.March, 2011, 555 Shanghai Street, Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 3552 3388,
Fax: (852) 3552 3322, Jor.fan@langhamhotel.com, Hongkong.langhamplacehotels.com)

Mr. Patrick Wong, Director of Projects at Intercontinental Grand Stanford

(Wed, 27.April, 2011, 70 Mody Road, Tsimshatsui East, Kowloon, Hong Kong, Tel: (852)
27215161 ext. 2578, Mobile: (852) 6305 6082, Fax: (852) 2315 2286,
p.wong@grandstanford.com, www.hongkong.intercontinental.com)

Ms. Rita Poon, Hygiene Manager responsible for Green Initiatives at Grand Hyatt (1 Harbour
Road, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 2588 1234, Fax: (852) 2802 0677, hongkong.grand@hyatt.com)

Mr. Antonio Chan, Chief Engineer at Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel (Fri, 25.February, 2011,
Pennys Bay/Lantau Island, Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 3550 3944, Fax: (852) 3550 3999,
Antonio.chan@disney.com, www.hongkongdisneyland.com)

Shane Pateman, General Manager of Novotel Nathan Road Kowloon (Wed, 6.April, 2011,
348 Nathan Road, Kowloon Hong Kong, Tel: (852) 3965 8888, Direct Tel: (852) 3965 8881,
Fax: (852) 3965 8833, Mobile: (852) 6389 8018, Shane.pateman@accor.com)

Joined Program

Hyatt, Novotel and Disney Land Resorts do not participate in the ISO program because of
diverse reasons. Disney Land Resorts chief engineer stated that ISO has no clear guidance
and vague regulations. Furthermore ISO is not perfectly suitable for Disney as this company
includes 65 companies with around 10 offices each and it would be too complicated and
expensive to make them all follow ISO regulations. Instead they have their own system and
clear targets given by the World Disney Organisation. The Disney head office has established

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a sustainability report, which provides guidelines and its aim is to reduce waste by 50 % and
indirect greenhouse emissions by 10% by 2013. The Disney Land Companies get punished if
their green aims are not achieved or they have to pay other people to do environmental
preservation activities (planting trees, collecting waste) instead of themselves. However, the
Disney Hotel Hong Kong got 100 different awards for different sustainable sectors (design,
etc.) The same approach is followed by the Hyatt Hotel group, which as well has its own
Hyatt Earth Program and provides a platform for all offices, through which it receives
directives from the head office in Chicago.

Furthermore, Novotel Hong Kong is not a supporter of ISO as the management is convinced
that ISO is more suitable for manufactures than for the hotel industry. ISO requires too much
paperwork and this takes too much time, which could be better used for actively doing
something good for the environment and society. This opinion is shared by the
Intercontinental, which as well does not use ISO because the managers believes that the
extensive paperwork it needs to comply with ISO is useless for solving environment
problems. Moreover, ISOs overall popularity among hotels is not very high. Mr. Patrick
Wong, Director of Projects at Intercontinental Grand Stanford, believes that guests do not
choose a hotel because it has ISO14000. The Langham Group, however, believes that ISO is a
good system but it is applied to all industries, whereas other certification schemes such as
Earth Check is only tailor-made for tourism and therefore provides a better benchmark
possibility. ISO only monitors processes, but it does not look at performances. The Langham
Place Hotel believes in ISO and it has received ISO 14000 two years ago. Moreover the Hotel
has a green team responsible for sustainability issues, of which Mr. Jor Fan is the supervisor.
He is also responsible for the documentation of green developments within the hotel, in
order to show quantitative improvements in form of facts and figures. Every second month
the implementation status of green procedures and fittings is ranked, this includes figures for
waste management (the main focus of Langham Place), energy saving etc. All in all there are
around 72 items assessed for ISO. The results are summed up which then gives a percentage,
targeting to get 90%. ISO external audit later looks the results up and give recommendations
for improvement. When it comes to the point that a hotel has achieved three of his
predetermined goals, it receives a waste wise label. The next stage is to achieve nine
predetermined goals and then get awarded with the label of excellence. Earth Check
benchmarks all results once a year. This is also very important for the company as it
compares Langham Hotel with other hotels that are as well concerned about their impact on
the environment. As an example, the Earth Check annual assessment indicated that the
Langham Hotels average consumption was 237MJ per guest/night compared to the hotel

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industry average of 480MK per guest/night, which gives a better performance than required
by Earth Check (336MJ per guest/night).

All hotels of the Langham Group are registered to Earth Check, as it is a good gatekeeper. In
2008, eight hotels have started the program of which seven have received silver certification
and one has received Earth Check Benchmark Bronze Status. Therefore completed the
benchmarking assessment with the performance indicators above the predetermined
baseline level. Furthermore, five new hotels have started the Earth Check process this year.
Within the Earth Check Certification scheme a hotel can get bronze for the first year, after
one year it gets silver and it has to keep silver for five years in order to get gold. This program
requires the participants to constantly improve not only on a benchmark basis, but also on an
internal basis in order to improve hotel-specific issues that are beyond the indicators
provided by Earth Check.

The Langham Group attaches the importance to have a third party verification process to
check their data and assess their process, as the senior management is strictly against green
washing. To receive Earth Check almost ten different types of annual data (electricity-,
water-, gas consumption, etc.) are submitted every year, which are then compared to an
established database. This comparison can be very complicated as it always depends on the
hotel type, size, location, climate zone, number of guests, etc. Further, to check the process,
Earth Check undertakes an off-site and on-site assessment every second year, i.e. one year
on-site the other year off-site. This programme enables quantitative reporting and a detailed
evaluation of risks whilst identifying areas for operational savings. The Langham Group wants
to focus on only one system in order to avoid too many different audits and therewith
confusing their staff, which would negatively affect daily operations. Langham has further
launched a Guests of the Earth programme in 2009, which targets to build sustainable
communities by creating programmes and charitable partnerships.

Also the Intercontinental has joined Earth Check in 2008. This hotel was the first hotel in
Hong Kong with a bronze certificate. Today they have already received a silver certificate. In
order to obtain silver they had to follow an environmental management system, including an
internal risk assessment to determine the potential environmental risks of the hotel. Once
this was done, they had to set environmental targets focusing on energy, consumption,
waste reduction, recycling and education. In Hong Kong there are 5 Intercontinental Group
Hotels, and they all have a green program called Green Engage. All hotels (more than 4000
worldwide) have to participate in this program. This hotel chain program consists of three
levels and each level has two standards, one for newly built hotels and one for existing
hotels. Of course new hotels have to be more environmentally friendly, as energy saving

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fittings can already be included in the construction phase. Green Engage has many strict
requirements including energy saving, waste reduction, education, etc. Regular guidelines
are sent to hotels on an online portal where hotels in return have to submit their audits and
data. In Wongs opinion, the cover area of this Green Engage program is bigger than the one
of Earth Check. Furthermore each hotel of the Intercontinental Group has a green group
committee, which consists of representatives of various operational departments and in
which members are consulting each other monthly on environmental targets and their
results.

th
Novotel instead reached for the Green Globe and has been certified in 2009 (4 hotel in
Hong Kong to receive it after Nikko, Intercontinental and Holiday Inn). To get the Green
Globe a hotel needs to implement policies showing the commitment and specify targets,
which it wants to achieve within 12 months.

Environmental Initiatives/Practices

The main focus of hotels sustainable developments is usually on waste management by

adhering to the 3 Rs (recycle, reuse, reduce), but also energy - and water saving schemes play
a crucial role.

Disney Land goes one step further with regards to waste management by having sorted their
waste into 12 different types. They are the top players in decomposing (they resell their
waste) and recycling in Hong Kong. Furthermore Disney, Hyatt and Novotel collect waste
batteries from the staff.

Being an event hotel, the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong has to deal with a great amount of
beverage bottles used for events. In the last two years 144 tons of glass have been collected
within the Grand Hyatt. Unfortunately the regulations in Hong Kong require hotels to pay for
the collection of glass, which is then used for fabricating brick. Also Novotel is facing the
problem of paying for recycling their waste, nevertheless, they recycle their waste by
providing their plastic for fabricating clothes, whereas their glass is also used for pavement.
Novotel goes one step further by including guests in their waste management procedures
and putting one normal bin and one recycle bin in the guestroom used for plastic, glass and
other recyclable waste. For the small shampoo bottles in the bathroom, they are not reused
nor refilled, but recycled and they have a volume that can serve two guests.

Guests of Novotel and Disney Land Resorts have to notify whenever they want their towels
to be changed, otherwise nothing is changed until the 2nd day of stay. Disney Land has not
received any complaints as guests only stay 1,5 days on average. Novotel has information

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signs about this procedure in the guestroom and guests can choose whether or not they
want new linens every day. Moreover Novotel offers a reusable laundry bag. Hyatt does not
have this green card for choosing to change the linen. Their guest can wish at the check- in to
have it less often changed and if he/she wants a newspaper.

The key cards system for saving energy is already a standard in Novotel and Disney Land
Resorts. Hyatt has not yet installed them but this will be done during the next renovation
phase of the hotel. Disney Land Resorts have even installed motion sensors in guestrooms in
order to switch off energy sources that are not used.

All hotels have already installed flow restrictors in showers and taps and Novotel even uses
seawater for flushing the toilet.

LED lighting is also getting more and more common among the interviewed hotels. Hyatt has
already replaced 99% of their traditional lighting with LED, which required high investment
and took over a year. All lamps at Novotel are either LED or low energy bulbs. Through LED,
Disney managed to decrease electricity by 10%.

The Intercontinental has also replaced all the halogen lamps in the guest corridor to LED
lamps. Moreover it has an energy-saving centralized AC system, which has two modes, the
occupied mode (when you enter your key card in your room), where guests can choose the
temperature (ranging between 19 to 25C) and the saving mode, which means that the
guest room has a set temperature. Further, they put a card by the bed, which guests can put
on the bed when they wish that linen are not changed every day. They use seawater for their
chiller plant, but the Hong Kong requirements are very strict, as they do not accept too much
chlorine in the water to be disposed in the harbour, therefore they need to check the
chlorine in their water in the laboratory every month. They have a local agent recycling their
kitchen oil. A major part of their food waste is not processed yet, but they are donating some
of the food to a local charity organization. Plastic bottles, carton, aluminum cans, glass
bottles are all recycled. Glass bottles are recycled through a program of the Hong Kong Hotel
Associations environmental protection, where hotels sign up and share the transportation
costs to a local contractor to collect the hotels glass bottles. This year they paid 30.000HKD
to the contractor. Mr. Wong stated that it always depends on the owners willingness to
invest in expensive fittings, just if the payback period is less than 3 years, they will consider
making an investment. Further, they are actively working with two charities, for kids and for
mentally ill people, by organising Christmas Parties in their staff cafeteria and excursions or
by raising funds. Last year they invested 500.000HKD to change, Heat Exchanger, used in
their laundry plant, which works with steam from a steam generator and the return steam

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normally would go back to the steam boiler, but due to the heat exchanger the water is
heated before it comes to the water boiler.

The Intercontinentals lobby consists of a lot of wide windows on which they tried to install
special foils, which protect the building form heat to come into the lobby and help to save a
lot of energy on AC. However, these foils were only available in a width which was shorter
than the glass and which would be visible for the guests. As it was affecting the appearance,
they couldnt install them. For most parts in a hotel, the payback period is more than 5 years
that is why it is difficult to implement energy-saving fittings if the old parts are still in a good
shape. 99% of the owners are willing to implement environmentally friendly parts if it is
saving energy costs significantly, but if is just about the environment, owners are often
reluctant to invest.

The Management of Hyatt was facing a the same problem, as it has a lot of windows facing
the harbor side, the rooms and especially the lobby area become very hot during the
summer. To reduce energy consumption through air-conditioning they put darkening
window stickers, which prevent heat generated by the sun to get into the rooms. Through
this fitting indoors air temperature could be decreased by 2-3C. However, this method
required a lot of retailer research for finding a proper company that produces right sized
window stickers. Moreover high investment was needed and this is the reason why those
stickers have been only installed in certain selected locations. In the wintertime, Hyatt uses
open ventilation for less AC usage. Novotel has centralized air-condition with a minimum
room temperature of 23C, guests cannot make it colder, just warmer. Disney Land as well
uses a even higher minimum AC temperature, but they have a decentralized AC system. This
control system keeps room temperature at around 25.5C and guests may individually
control the AC in their room. The chillers are improved and now save costs up to 50%.
Moreover they improved the heat pumps and boilers. Novotel commented that they have
never received any complaints about higher temperatures and their other environmental
practices.

Novotel also has concerns about their carbon footprint and so they paid a company for being
their carbon audit and measure carbon footprint. The results will be received next year,
because it is the first year of doing this. Moreover they paid a company to measure air and
noise level coming from the building. To do so every part of equipment is analyzed
individually on its noise emission and after receiving the results the noisy equipment is put
away. They had to replace old refrigeration, because of too much noise, too much energy
consumption and bad gas emission.

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The Langham Group, who states that the first reason to start environmental initiatives is cost
saving, shares this opinion. However, the Langham Place Hotel is a little bit more advanced
than other hotels. It has an assigned Environmental Manager for the entire Langham Group
for 13 hotels for 2 years now, which makes it the only company in Hong Kong to have a
fulltime environmental manager. The Langham Hotel itself has further hired a fulltime
environmental officer, and Eaton has recently hired a part time assistant environmental
officer. Further, they have green hotel group initiatives since 2008, which includes that each
hotel has a green team committee, consisting of existing staff. Those initiatives are different
in every hotel, even differences within the 3 hotels in Hong Kong due to different location,
different guest profiles and different settings of the building (e.g. age) as environmental
initiatives depend on the hardware of the building. Langhams Green Team encourages active
participation, colleague engagement, learning and awareness, raising new ideas and
initiatives for environmental improvement. Langham Place is the most environmentally
friendly hotel of the three hotels in Hong Kong. Eaton is the only 4 star hotel and therefore
they have a different approach. Eaton has a minimum bathroom stationary. Furthermore
Eaton hotel have renovated the lobby, used bamboo for the wall (green materials), indoor
green wall, etc. There are a lot of green initiatives done by the Langham Group such as their
truck is using biodiesel, which is made from their recycled cooking oil and purchased back as
biodiesel from the recycling company. In general, the payback period for environmental
initiatives varies a lot, but usually they show some cost savings in the end. LED light bulbs
involve some initial costs, but for example the change from normal diesel to bio diesel does
not cost much, there is just an adjustment to the truck needed. It is similar for waste, they
participate in a government program for glass recycling, and the only thing that costs
something is space to store the waste. Further, all of their hotels do charity run, food
donations, etc. They aim to work with local communities, not with global worldwide
organizations. Further, most of their hotels have participated in the Earth Hour for 3 years
now. Langham place has organized free snacks and cocktails event at a backyard during that
hour. Most of their hotels have turned off the lights in the public area, asked the guests to
turn off the lights as well, the lights at the restaurant would be dimmed down and instead
they used candles. Laguna at Eaton was the first restaurant that stopped selling Bluefin tuna
in Hong Kong, and today their three hotels provide strict no shark fins menus. Further every
employee in their hotel has to do something good for the community, which affects their
bonus. This means that they have to attend a community event at least once a year. The
Langham group is a group that does not do any carbon offsetting, because they believe that
they should reduce their carbon emission themselves instead of offsetting what they have
already emitted. Further, activities like tree planting are seen as green washing by the
Langhams senior management, as trees are just seeds when they are planted and there are

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no carbon emissions offset until maybe 10 years later as a real tree. Langham Group thinks
that it is the best to use their expertise to give back to the community. All in all, Ms. Ng
believes that senior management support is very important for a company to be committed
to environmental protection and CSR. Environmental protection has to be integrated in a
business strategy. Being a sustainable company does not only mean to do something
environmentally friendly, but also to create a culture of the company, and the culture should
start from the senior management.

Langham Place Hotel use key cards in their hotel rooms to avoid unnecessary energy wasting,
through not shutting down the lights, TV etc. The laundry service is reduced by just cleaning
the towels that are not hanging on the hook and the linens were only changed after request.
(Excluding long-term stays) In the showers there are water saving showerheads installed that
help to reduce the amount of water used by 27%. In order to reduce waste that is produced
by the guests, the shampoo bottles are refillable and they are not changed every day, to
avoid taking out bottles that are still half full. There is another bottle provide to leave the
guest the decision to either use a new one or take the rest of the old one. The Hotel has the
possibility to share some tasks of its departments with their sister Hotel Langham Hotel in
TST. A good example for their harmonized cooperation is how they deal with their Laundry.
They clean the towels in Mongkok, to safe water and energy. Since their opening in 2005, the
hotel tries to reduce waste in order to keep the impact on the environment low. Since 2010
they use special heat pumps to recover heat from the four chillers to heat the water, they
managed to save 75% of the energy of the boilers. They were also thinking about using
renewable sources of energy, but the project of solar panels had to be rejected due to the
too small roof surface. In the last 5-years they reduced their carbon emission by 10%. They
saved more than 100 tones of rubbish through recycling activities. The staff is asked to
collect electronic items to reuse them. This recycling also has disadvantages for the company
as they have to pay, for example 2,000 HKD to a company that picks up the glass at the hotel.
Moreover they are successful in saving paper by a paperless office environment. In the end
oft the year they used 480000 pieces of paper less than the year before. Unfortunately they
are not yet able to recycle their food waste (1 tone per day), due to the additional costs it
would cause. They would again have to pay companies to pick it up. Another possibility they
were thinking of was to install an own compost machine, but they had to give up that idea,
because of the limited space available in the hotel. These limitations forced Langhams
management to be creative and therefore they start to recycle their cooking oil. They
achieved to recycle 2,700 liters and transformed it into bio-fuel, which is used to run the
hotel truck. It took more than a year of effort until the permission for this project was given.

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Water saving can only be achieved through the help oft he staff and the guests. Through
encouraging them they managed to use 20% less water.

One of the biggest problems in Hotels is the recycling of food waste, as additional money for
the transportation of leftovers is commonly needed and therefore a problem. All hotels in
Hong Kong support this statement. Hyatt and Novotel use their food waste as fish food, fish
pallets or fish fertilizers. Hyatt also uses the waste for producing soil. Moreover they have an
own Bakery for guests and at the end of the day the employees get the left overs, but
sometimes it is so much that it is used for charities. In this case homeless people receive it
through volunteers giving it out to them. Even hot food is offered. This program is called
Foodlink. Even the already kitchen oil in the kitchen has a value for Hyatt it does not get
dumped instead it gets recycled.

Moreover, Novotel has a sustainable purchasing policy as they take care where they buy
their products. To give an example, their paper is either 100 % recycled or from the FCE
certified forest without using bleaching. Furthermore, all the chemicals used are biologically
creditable. Seafood is only bought if it is not on WWFs red list or an endangered species.
They even measure food miles from every food item, done by taking the weight and the
method of transport into consideration. All in all it can be stated that they only select
suppliers by their environmental reputation and they check the key suppliers personally.

Hyatt, Novotel and Disney Land Resorts all participate in charity programs, as they want give
something back to the community. Each single Hyatt hotel is doing something on a local
basis; this starts with simple things like donating waste mattress, linen and towels to a
charity. Novotel is convinced that they should not only do something for the environment
but also try to help the local community. The Novotel groups social project is that it has a Chi
Hang AIDS foundation in China (School and Factory), which helps Aids infected women to
survive. They sell their handmade bags in Novotel Hotels. Novotels philosophy is If you do
something, do it properly! The general manager of Novotel Kowloon provided as an
example for the green active their cleaning the beach initiative and their corporation with
Friends of Earth, where they plant 200 trees every year in the New Territories of Hong
Kong.

Disney Land, as it is a huge company has a lot of stakeholders, those have to be convinced
before they can get active to change something. Like in the program of Novotel they plant
trees and clean areas, but of course in much bigger dimensions as they have the resources. In
the Disney Land Theme Park they offer green tracks, where people can learn about the plants
and get in touch with the nature, which in the end should raise the wish to protect it. Even

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blind people are taken to touch tree. It is a given fact that trees are absorbing greenhouse
gas and the theme park will be expand, and therefore they need to reclaim land with
additional trees. On the new land gained they will plant 50000 new trees so greenhouse gas
will be decreased again. The plans for reclaiming land, caused some discussions with
environmentalists, but the doubts disappeared, as they could convince the audience that the
reclaiming will even help the environment. The reason for that is that on the ocean ground
lots of old ship and alum waste created by the former heavy industry, can be found and this
would then get removed.

Staff Training

According to Mr. Antonio Chan, chief engineer at Hong Kong Disneyland, being
environmentally friendly increases the workload of an employee only by 5 % in average but
the staff likes to do it and the stakeholders expect it.

Usually the staff in a hotel is trained on energy & water conservation, waste handling and
pollution issues. Hyatt educates the employees to be responsible recyclers, through the
battery collection box, oil and food recycling in kitchen etc. Also Disneyland has special
training for the housekeeping employees on how to reduce waste by collecting the bins from
the rooms and public areas and separate them into 12 different types. Novotel especially
trains its housekeeping employees to sort the waste of guestrooms as they deal with the
biggest proportion of waste in the hotel. They encouraged their staff to raise new ideas on
how to improve environmental practices.

Furthermore, all Novotels employees are trained annually and by starting at the company
they go through an introduction. Three to four seminars regarding sustainability issues are
organized for more awareness. (e.g. WWF presentation about sustainable seafood, about
climate change, excursion to a water treatment plant). Employees are also encouraged to
voluntarily participate in beach cleaning events. Last year 50 employees took part. The hotel
further has an own organic garden given to its employees. It is located in Ton Chuan and the
staff can harvest and grow their own vegetables (garden rented from YMCA hotels). Also
Hyatt starts its environmental education in the orientation phase, lasting 2-3 days. First the
department heads have to be trained and they then train the rest of the employees. Hyatt
has a Green committee that consists of people from different departments and the top
managers. Every month they have a meeting to go through actual data.

Also the Intercontinental has different education programs and activities to educate the staff
members, like cleaning beaches, planting trees or they built a fence for a local farm, which is

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operated by a local charity. Through these kind of activities they aim to pass a message to
their employees to be more socially and environmentally responsible. Within their green
group, their employees are audited as well and the green group is crosschecking
environmental practices in each department. A department, however, which is often
neglected, is the kitchen, which contributes crucially to a hotels impact on the environment.
Therefore they manage kitchen staff with trainings and meetings. As a result, the recycling of
glass bottles, plastic, etc. has increased a lot since last year. This is an achievement that they
can measure after doing a lot of trainings.

The Langham Place states that it is very important to include all employees from all the
departments in the green movement and to raise their awareness. Earth Check has some
policies or standards that they utilize, but according to Ms. Carmen Ng it is important to
combine the employees to get ideas and initiatives.

The Langham Place Group thinks that employees would be more motivated if they get a
wider range of opportunities to volunteer, but as they do not have a person responsible for
community events these opportunities are very limited. They see that employees want to do
something more meaningful than tree planting.

Marketing/Information for Guests

All Hotels provide environmental information on their Website. Novotel provide feedback
forms in their guest rooms. Disney Lands Sustainability is not heavily promoting this aspect
as their focus is on the Disney brand, which has more power to attract guests. According to
Hyatt money is always an issue, when it comes to sustainability, but Disney said that this
usually does not affect the prices for guests, because new projects need to pay back by
themselves. It is not enough to just help the environment

Novotel displays the sustainable policies copy in the lobby to raise the awareness of
sustainable practices. Furthermore they have a TV channel, which shows policies and energy
saving recommendations, it also gives information on the Earth Hour every year. They have a
Facebook page, where they post sustainable issues and many people comment on this posts.
They further have a newsletter, called the Green Globe newsletter. All their guests are
aware about their green thinking and welcome it. Some people choose the hotel because of
its green issues, so it is more handled as a marketing tool than a cost-saving matter. Even on
TripAdvisor and other guest forums people leave comments about the hotels good
environmental policies. In the opinion of Novotel, environmental policies help the marketing
and hotel positioning.

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Every Langham Place Group Hotel has a magazine-type hotel directory, which is updated
quarterly and which provides a section on their environmental initiatives. They are however
not charging more because they do not think that the market is already there yet to pay
more for staying in an environmental hotel. The Langham Place Group sees being sustainable
as a basic they provide to their guests. It is not like a special feature that adds a value to your
room. However, Earth Check requires them to post their policy in the lobby. Apart from that
and the websites and hotel directory, there has not been done a lot, because they want to
make sure that first operations are performing an environmental protection workflow,
before they start to educate our guests. So the next stop is to engage the guests more to be
more environmentally friendly.

Specifically at the Langham Place Hotel guests are further made aware of the green
initiatives by providing brochures and magazines in the room. Moreover some seminars are
hold to share values and experiences with other companies.

The Intercontinental does not have a statement about green initiatives in their lobby, only in
their in-house magazines, which features their green programs. They do not want to say that
they are a green hotel as for them being green is a brand image. In their magazines, website
etc. guests can get the information on their certificates etc. The Intercontinental agrees with
the other hotels, that there is no direct relationship between the room rates and being green
as the room rate still depends on the market. However, Mr. Wong (Intercontinental) believes
that if there are two hotels and one is greener, people would pay a little bit more to stay in a
green hotel and people are already doing this.

Customers

Hyatt is convinced that there is an increased guest interest in green issues. Within their
Central Purchasing System, a lot of questions are asked about green procedures.

Disney said that it also depends on the guests origin, e.g.: Europeans would be interested in
sustainability, Chinese not.

Langham Group said that green initiatives are accepted by guests and that they get really
excited as the Hotel use high technology phones (IP phone) which have integrated screens
that can display information about the hotel, etc., which helps to save paper. Another sign
for this acceptance is that in all 3 hotels of the group, whenever the housekeeping sees an
opened shampoo bottle, which was half way used, they will replenish a new bottle on the
side together with the old one, and 80% to 90% of all guests would use the old one again
instead of opening a new one, which shows that guests are aware that they shouldnt be

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wasteful. A lot of their guests are from oversees, that is way some large companies ask for
information about carbon footprints. Especially for Hong Kong hotels, business travellers are
very important and the hotels carbon footprint is increasingly checked.

The Intercontinental states that guests are often asking what kind of certificates they have
and whenever corporate guests want to make a meeting there, they send a questionnaire on
environmental protection through their sales department (what do you recycle, etc.). It is
becoming a trend for corporate travellers. Regarding leisure guests, they have rarely received
information requests in advance. Sometimes, they have received positive comments by
leisure guests, but this is still very seldom. However, some guests are not very environmental
conscious especially if they expect a certain service quality from a five star hotel and do not
want to be faced with any restrictions.

Also at the Langham Place Hotel guests normally welcome green programs, even though
some complain e.g. because of the reduced laundry service as the Langham Hotel is a five
star hotel. On the other hand, some MICE and corporate customers demand a green
movement of the hotel, but it is not common that this influences their final booking decision
to a high extent. According to the Langham Place Hotel, for customers, the brand of a hotel is
much more important, as being green is already taken for granted.

Hong Kong

All the hotels agree that Hong Kong, compared to other countries, is very slow in terms of
adapting sustainability. They think there is too less done! Hyatts manager stated that Hong
Kong is not environmentally friendly and Disneylands managers said that Hong Kong is a
baby in sustainability.

Novotel further explains that the HKSAR government does not set severe regulations but
they give out a few certifications. Novotel received the Quality Water Building Recognition
Scheme, so they have to test the water every 2 month on drinkability.

The Intercontinental has received bronze at the Hong Kong Award of Excellence (HKAEE) in
2009, Hyatt received the same award in 2011 and Langham Place Hong Kong received gold in
2011. The Hong Kong Award for Environmental Excellence (HKAEE) has replaced the former
Eco business award, which they have now expanded to 6 industries and the hotel industry is
one of them. Disney gets the Hong Kong Environmental Goal Award every second year (hotel
cant win this award every consecutive year).

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The Intercontinental has further joined another program by the Hong Kong Productivity
Council and in 2011 they received class of excellence. In order to achieve this class 9 or more
targets on reducing waste need to be achieved, whereas the InterContinental Hong Kong is
focusing on 4 key areas including waste reduction, energy saving, recycling and education.

Novotel claims that all regulations made by the government are on a voluntary basis. The
HKSAR government is not heavy on enforcing policies but they try to have stricter regulations
on waste disposal and recycling. Disney says Hong Kong tried to get the locals to voluntarily
separate waste but they would not do it, if they can choose not to do it. Hyatt raised its
concern about the food waste as there are 3300 tons per day in Hong Kong and 200 tons
could be reused.

A monopolized supplier delivers Hong Kongs electricity and therefore companies must take
it from them and have no other choice of for example renewable energy sources. Hong Kong
tries to control businesses to not discharge oil etc. (Hyatt).

Langham Place Hong Kong would wish to have more support, through free of charge picking
up systems. According to Mr. Jor Fan (Langham Place) this change of regulations is not going
to happen in the near future, as Hong Kong likes to avoid having too much influence and
restriction from the government, to be seen as a free and easy trading country. According to
Mr. Wong (Intercontinental) the reason is that the government tries to create a very free
economic society in order to attract a lot of foreigners to invest in Hong Kong. They are afraid
that if Hong Kong is implementing too many new policies, important companies go to other
countries. Also Ms. Ng (Langham Group) is sharing this opinion by saying that Hong Kongs
free market approach is the reason for keeping environmental regulations on a voluntary
basis. However, some parts of waste management truly work out, like the Hong Kongs
recycling market. This is because private companies are doing the job so there is no need for
the government to implement legislations or regulations unless the situation gets worse.

However, according to Mr. Jor Fan (Langham Place), Hong Kong realized that some
regulations had to be made and so they implemented some guidelines. These guidelines are
based on 3 scopes, whereby the first scope is very broad formulated, including some bans
and rules that should already be common knowledge. The second scope is as well mandatory
and specifies water usage regulations. The 3 scopes are voluntary and just give
recommendations for paper and waste management (Langham Place Hong Kong).

Mr. Wong (Intercontinental) states that the HKSAR government should at least sponsor the
collection of food waste and glass bottles, as, if companies would not have to pay for

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recycling, every company would participate. However, he thinks that the environmental
awareness of Hong Kongs society is increasing. This opinion is confirmed by Ms. Ng
(Langham Hotels International Group), who further states that more people would be
thinking of choosing a green hotel to a regular one if they charge the same. She says that
especially food waste is a big issue in Hong Kong, as the government is not building a
composting plant and therefore private companies to process food waste are needed.
Further, the HKSAR has implemented a Municipal Waste 10 years Plan, where they look at
the product eco-responsibility bill. They have started to charge plastic bags and to include a
premium that customers pay when purchasing a product (electronic devices, tires, etc.),
which is then used for disposing and recycling the product in an environmentally friendly
way. According to Ms. Ng, another problem arising in Hong Kong is the impossibility of
installing solar panels, as almost all the buildings are high-rise, so there is not enough space
available. Unless they come up with some technology to change the windows to be solar
panels, but again it depends on the orientation of the sun. And since Hong Kong is not sunny
all the time with all the smog, it is still not efficient enough. In Hong Kong space is definitely
the biggest constraint, it is more expensive to buy space than equipment to be more
sustainable. Compared to other metropolitan cities, Hong Kong is a very special case as the
city itself is not sustainable; it cannot contain itself, as there are no farms and few factories.
Everything has to be imported and fresh food is usually imported from Mainland China that is
why defrosting food in restaurants is a big issue. The traditional way in Hong Kong to
defrosting food is to keep hot tap water running over it, so a lot of water is unnecessarily
wasted. Now, they are using better practices, they still run the water, but in a slower way
and the wastewater is kept in a tank to reuse in a different way.

One point where Hong Kong is very sustainable is the transportation network as not many
people have cars and most of our employees are using public transportation to go to work
and cabs are using natural gas.

According to Ms. Ng (Langham Place Group) water shortage is not an issue at all in Hong
Kong. Although Hong Kong does not have its own resources, but reservoirs, which do not
even supply half of the water supply needed in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has purchased water
from China to make sure that there is a constant supply of fresh water from China to Hong
Kong, which has the result that water saving is not an issue, especially because water is not
expensive in Hong Kong. Further, she states, that all the recyclable material, (paper, plastic,
etc.) are shipped to China for processing. If China does not allow any import of waste
anymore, that would cause Hong Kong a big problem in recycling and waste handling. In that
case all the waste would be without value. Because in Hong Kong it is free to dispose waste

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(meaning it is individuals do not have to pay more when disposing more waste, but the
landfill is paid by taxes, etc.), so there is no financial incentive for companies to recycle.
Further, there is no recycling plant at a government level in Hong Kong; private companies do
all recycling.

Future Plans

Hyatt has big plans for their renovations in 2012, as this will open their chance to improve
energy usage. Moreover they want to use green in their hotel design and fittings. They will
have showerheads with water saving modification and key cards for electricity & AC.

Disney wants to use solar panels for their hotel. It will be the 1st hotel in in Hong Kong to use
it, expected payback around 10 years.

Novotel plans to do more for the local community and therefore, receive more local
certifications. They are planning to make a mid-autumn festival in corporation with the YMCA
hotel where they want to invite minor-class people for a dinner.

The Intercontinental Grand Stanford is currently undergoing major renovations, whereby

they are aiming to install energy saving fittings. They want to use LED lights and install a new
AC system in their renovated ballroom.

The Langham Hotels International Group is planning to use more LED lights in all hotel, as
they need less energy and the bulbs include less harmful substances in production. Although
the initial costs of LED Lights are still very high, stability and performance varies between
brands. The colour spectrum of the light is different to regular light bulbs. LED lightings are
constantly improving to become an ultimate solution. The Hotel further wants to continue
reducing the use of paper by using more technologies (e.g. they have already implemented
Ipads in their restaurants, as a menu).

The Langham Place is planning to join online Green Booking Networks, in order to better
promote their sustainable philosophy. Furthermore they will train all new employees on
green issues and special operating tasks. They want to further increase their awareness.
After that, their next big future plan is to improve their chillers, to safe energy and be more
efficient. However, they will not install new chillers before the old ones break down, as in the
end all that matters are the costs and return on investment instead of the green issues.
Moreover, the management of Langham Hotel honestly said that the main reason for this
green movement is cost saving and not the management concern about the environment.
Mr. Jor Fan, the environmental management system manager at Langham Place, always has

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to convince the owners of the hotel first to get the allowance to install new fittings and make
changes, by showing the Return on Investment figures.

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Appendix 3: Expert Interview Results Vienna

Interviewees List

th
Klaus Christandl, General Manager of Hotel Imperial Wien (Tue, 11 October, 2011 at the
Hotel Imperial: Krntner Ring 16, 1015 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1 50110424, Fax: +43 (0)
150110420, klaus.christandl@luxurycollection.com)

th
Fanny Holzer, General Manager of 25hours Hotel Wien (Tue, 10 November, 2011 at the
25hours Hotel: Lerchenfelder Strasse 1-3, 1070 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1 521510, Fax: +43 (0)
152151888, fholzer@25hours-hotels.com)

th
Michaela Reitterer, Owner of Boutique Hotel Stadthalle Wien (Mon, 24 October, 2011 at
the Hotel Stadthalle: Hackengasse 20, 1150 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1 9824272,
michaela.reitterer@hotelstadthalle.at)

Patrizia Tonin, Public Relations Manager of Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom (Mon, 19th
December, 2011 at the Sofitel Vienna: Praterstrasse 1, 1020 Wien, Tel: +43 (0) 1906163106,
Fax: +43 (0) 1906163000, patrizia.tonin@sofitel.com)

Joined Program

Hotel Imperial just joined national classification programs and this with great success, as they
received the - Umweltgtesiegel already three times in a row. They have a lot of other
predetermined standards and goals to achieve in order to stay in line with the hotel chains
(Starwood hotels) business concept. Hotel Imperial is forced to send a Sustainable Report
twice a year to the Starwoods Headquarter in North America in order to prove that they
reached the short-term goals, since 2010. The hotel chains long-term sustainable plan and
guideline is called 2030 by 2020. This name stands for the period of time, so ten years, in
which they want to reduce their energy consumption by 20% and their water consumption
by 30%. The year 2008 is the baseline for these measurements. They are concentrating
especially on those two figures as these resources cause the main operating costs.

Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom as well follows the standards and concept of the hotel chain
ACCOR, which installed a program called Earth Guest Policy. This program is based on their
business philosophy of hospitality and respect for other cultures. The Earth Guest program
consists of two parts, the EGO project (for social and health sector) and the ECO project
(protection of the environment). Moreover, ACCOR has received the first place of
tomorrows value rating of the biggest hotel chains. ACCOR successfully supports its

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surrounding environment, by including the neighbours in the provision of their tourism
product. However, Sofitel Vienna is too young and had too less time to receive certifications
or awards.

All the hotel experts refuse to participate in ISO, as they believe it would cost too much
money and time. Hotel Stadthalles manager added that it is always hard to certificate a
service, which involves a lot of employees. It is more efficient to concentred on your
employees and to install a quality assurance policy.

Hotel Stadthalle sees its received certifications as a cheap way of getting more promoted.
They only actively participate in Green Brands, as they believe they will gain marketing
advantage. All the other certifications they received, like the Blue Hotel Award, the TRIGOS
sterreich, OEGZ Sterne Award 2011, Klimaschutzpreis and many more, they had never
applied for. 25hours Hotel has not joined any green classification program, as they are not
targeting pure green travellers and because they believe that they will never be absolute
green.

Environmental Initiatives/Practices

Hotel Imperial management puts its sustainable focus first on Resource Management, by
limiting their water and energy consumption by 2020, second on Waste management (what
is very difficult in Austria) and last but not least on Community Engagement. They believe
that supporting people in need by providing education and guidance helps to generate a
general growth of the whole Starwood Company, therefore its their priority.

Hotel Stadthalles owner stays in contrast to this approach, they hardly join any social
program. The only thing they do is donating the money the receive from their green seminars
to WWF. However, they truly perceive themselves as social, as they care a lot for their
employees. All their staff members have different needs through their diverse national
background, coming from 14 different countries.

The 25hours Hotel is going to participate in social projects at least once a year. For this year
they plan to organise an event in order to collect money for the organisation Movember.
This organisation use donations to fight against prostate cancer. Later they want to support
Die roten Nasen, clinic clowns, by selling red noses and organising events.

Sofitel is also engaged in social programs, through the east guest program of ACCOR. They
support the fight against AIDS through enlightening campaigns in affected countries. In

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Austria they are donating members of the AIDS LIFE organisation. Last year, they managed to
collect more than 15.000 through the event Stars, Food & Art.

Hotel Stadthalle spends more personal energy and money to protect the nature. They have
key cards, water restrictors, LED lighting, green guest cards and they do not provide a mini
bar and AC in each guestroom to save energy. Moreover they have district-heating systems,
photovoltaic system and their property is build as a passive house (Investment costs: 5,3Mil.)
that stores energy and so no heating or AC is necessary. However, not only their technical
fittings are build green they further only offer BIO- Products for breakfast and they try to
take food that has the shortest delivering way. Moreover, they try to separate their waste.

Sofitel Vienna as well included renewable technologies in their construction planning. They
installed solar panels for heating the water. Moreover, their energy system has an interface
with their hotel reservation software, by connecting the energy source only after the guest
checked-in with the particular room. Furthermore, the ACCOR Earth Guest program (more
precise the Plan for Planet initiative) aims to increase the number of trees in the Vienna
woods. Since 2009, ACCOR managed to finance 1, 70 million trees worldwide. In Austria
ACCOR has already planted 2.500 trees since October 2010.

The Imperial Hotel participates as well in environmental protecting programs by installing

water flow restrictors in guest rooms/ back of the house. Moreover they put guest cards in
the guestrooms to encouraging the customers to use their towels more than once and to
switch off the energy saving LED light when leaving the guestroom, as they do not have key
card). They have already started to install LED lights in 30% of the hotel, which have a
payback period of about 8 month.

25hours Hotel is also convinced of LED-lights although they believe that it is not appropriated
for all rooms of their hotel, due to the less shiny light they produce. Imperial further changed
their centralized heating and cooling system from a two-pipe system (which just can cool or
heat) to a more energy sufficient (does not mix cold and hot water) and more consumer
friendly (can be cooled and heated at the same time) four-pipe system. 25hours Hotel does
not have any special heating systems. They further cant put solar panels on their roof, as it is
already occupied by technical fitting that cant be installed in the hotels cellar. However, the
hotel garden includes a very nice pond, which is protected by the Hotels management, as it
hosts a duck family every year. They also focus on waste reduction and they separate waste.
Waste reduction happens through using reusable shampoo and soap- dispensers and
through buying products that are not wrapped in tones of plastic. Moreover, they made use
of second hand furniture for 80% of the total hotels furniture. For bio-waste they want to

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use a shredder, as they are not allowed to donate the leftovers. In order to safe water they
have flow- restrictors and they just change the linen every third day and take out the towels
only if they are thrown on the floor. For cleaning they just use bio- cleaning products. They
inform the guest at the check-in. Hotel Stadthalle and 25hours Hotel offer bicycle for rent to
their guest and therefore, support a car free environment. Hotel Stadthalle even reduces the
room price by 10% if the guest arrives with a bike or travel by train.

Staff Training

At hotel Imperial, like Sofitel and all the other interviewed hotels, the employees are
supervised and trained constantly on resource saving workflows. It is essential that the
managers act as good role models and lead their staff. However, the GM of Hotel Imperial
believes that most of the employees do not really care about being sustainable and that is
why they have to be reminded constantly. Sometimes it is necessary to even punish certain
departments, that cant deliver improvements.

The 25hours Hotel in contrast states that employees follow green workflows voluntarily;
however, the employees are trained when they start to work at the hotel.

Hotel Imperial organized a voluntary money-collecting event for UNICEF carried out by his
employees. They sold the Austrians favourite dish Kaiserschmarren to pedestrians at the
Opera House and Michaelaplatz. In the end they managed to collect 40.000 in 4 days.
Moreover Starwood Hotels organise on a regular basis employees cycling racing events
lasting 3days. On average they managed to gain 210.000 for different social organisations.
Every Starwood hotel can freely decide which event they want to carry out, in order to
support either the local community or an international organisation. Hotel Imperial chose
UNICEF which supports an education program for kids in Romania, as the mangers believe
that there the money is needed more urgently than in a national social organisation. Another
example is the Starwood Hotel in Phuket that organised, very spontaneously after the
tsunami in 2004, a charity ball to collect money for the victims. Around 45.000 have been
collected.

Ms. Michaela Reitterer the owner of Hotel Stadthalle is convinced that the training of her
employees is the most important task to fulfill. It is a never-ending process, but it is
necessary that all her employees truly live a green live. They have to understand what is
important and receive the knowledge they need to be able to judge what helps the
environment and what destroys it. That is the reason why the hotel Stadthalle does not has

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any service outsourced. All is provided by the own employees, which are very loyal and
receive ongoing seminars and training.

Marketing

Hotel Imperial and Sofitel Vienna do not really promote their environmental programs, as the
managers believe that most of the guests perceive being green for granted. The once that
are truly interested in their initiatives will ask about it. The General Manager of Hotel
Imperial and the PR Manager of Sofitel, said that being green is not a marketing advantage to
attract customers, it just can be perceived as a disadvantage if a hotel does not care about
being sustainable. Mr. Christandl, manager of the Imperial Hotel, further explained that it is
more important and valuable to change the attitude of your employees than to marked it to
your customers. Therefore, even on their website the clients has to search for a piece of
information. Mr. Christandl further said that Hotel Imperial would never use the word
Green for their sustainable convincement, as this term is already too politically polluted
and leads to misunderstandings.

Hotel Stadthalle is perfectly using its green movement as a marketing tool. As this hotel is
the first zero energy balanced hotel in Vienna, it is of great interest for the media and the
whole tourism industry. Therefore, Hotel Stadthalle does not have to put a lot of effort in
searching for useful promoting channels, usually the find her. Further they hold some
seminars to companies that are interested in joining the green part or work in a section of
business that is related to green issues. The seminar participants then usually stay overnight
in the hotel. Ms. Reitterer, the owner of Hotel Stadthalle, is convinced that her marketing of
green works so well as she truly lives green, not only in her daily business life, but also in her
private environment. It is her personal conviction to live sustainable and not the economic
advantage is the drive to move green. She never raised prices because of all the necessary
reservations; she just had to change her yield management. In a second stage the hotel
joined green travel platforms like Vertrglich Reisen, Fair Reisen etc. and they want to stay a
3 star hotel as the owner perceives this category as the best one to convey the green image.

25hours Hotel does not market their few green practices, not even at the website, as their
sustainable programs are too limited at the moment. The management thinks in an
economic instead of green way, meaning that they follow green engagements just if they are
able to include those into their daily business without any inconveniences.

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Customers

Mr. Klaus Christandl manager of the Imperial Hotel said that some of his guests do not care
about sustainability and sometimes even refuse to listen to his front office employees when
they start talking about the sustainable initiatives of the hotel. These guests are often from
Golf Regions, as they are not used to deal with the scarcity of resources. Furthermore, these
guests believe that the hotel service will suffer, just because they are not familiar with green
topics. However the majority of business guests perceive it as granted that a hotel
participates in environmental protection. Sofitel Vienna shares the opinion of Mr. Christandl
regarding the guests within the luxury tourism segment. Sustainability must be included in
the whole tourism package and the tourists will be willing to support this change. According
to the GM of Imperial Hotel, many companies would not book a hotel that does not care
about being green. Moreover, approximately only 10% of them are willing to pay more for
staying in a sustainable hotel.

The 25hours Hotel is convinced that there is already a visible movement to green of their
guests attitude. They are targeting mainly 20-50 year old guests. Humans cannot longer
deny that something has to be done to protect our environment.

Hotel Stadthalle found a new target group in companies that are working in the business
field of green development. These business travellers prefer to stay in a green branded hotel
in order to emphasize their green attitude. Almost all guest at the hotel Stadthalle truly live
green also at home and therefore, they receive just a few complaints about the air
temperature, which constantly stays at 21C. The manager perceives the Arabic travellers as
more careless about energy saving, but cannier with saving water than Austrians. This is
because they have the most sunlight and the biggest oil sources in their country, but they
suffer under the lack of water. The young generation is getting more aware, but there are
doubts that they would pay more money just for staying in a green hotel.

Vienna

The General Managers of Hotel Imperial and 25hours Hotel do not feel the need for more
environmental regulations to be made by the government, as there are already too many
rules and restrictions in force. Hotel Stadthalle claims that there are too narrow construction
rules. In Hotel Imperials GM opinion the Austrian government focuses on problems that are
not even mentioned in other countries and that are sometimes of little importance. He
believes that a sustainable movement must come from inside the company and must be truly
believed, because this is the only way to achieve valuable changes. In his opinion, however,

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Vienna should improve its waste management. The state-owned waste disposal company is
not prepared to keep the already before separated waste by hotels, separated in the end.
Furthermore, 25hours Hotel claims that the government should find better ways to recycle
or even reuse food leftovers. Now, because of the strict food regulations in Austria it is
almost impossible to donate food to charity organizations and people in need.
Hotel Stadthalles owner added that the green movement is very young and therefore, a lot
of regulations and laws need to be changed or newly invented. However, they hotels owner
was very happy to receive financial support from the Austrians Energy Forum for the
construction of the photovoltaic system.

Hotel Sofitel Vienna perceives the regulations of the Austrian government as sufficient.
Nevertheless, they would like to go beyond complying with regulations in order to obtain
better quality with less impact on the nature.

Future Plans

Hotel Imperial wants to do some long-term investments into better and easier to control
heating and cooling systems to save energy. Furthermore they want to change the rest of
their ordinary lamps to LED bulbs.

For the future hotel Stadthalle wants to continue being green by seeking state-of-the art
fittings. Further, they are considering expanding their current market position by creating the
first green budget hotel in Vienna.

25hours Hotel is planning to use the limited unused roof space to install beehives to produce
their own honey.

Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom has no plans up to now, as they have just finished their
constructions and started to operate. They are still in the evaluation process of their ongoing
operations, in order to clarify in which areas their performance could be improved.

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Appendix 4: Online Questionnaire

129



130



131



132



133



134



135



136






Appendix 5: Quantitative Research - SPSS Output

A) Sample Profiles - Bar Charts

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B) Frequency Tables - Accommodations and Expenditures

Frequency Table of the Most to the Least Preferred Accommodation Types

Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid hotel 95 41.3 41.3 41.3

hostel 32 13.9 13.9 55.2

B&B 24 10.4 10.4 65.7

rented 27 11.7 11.7 77.4

apartment/house

camp site 8 3.5 3.5 80.9

VFR 41 17.8 17.8 98.7

couchsurfing 3 1.3 1.3 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Number of Valid versus Missing Values for Determining the
Distribution of Expenditure

Statistics

Expenditure Expenditure Expenditure

Accommodation Activities Transportation

N Valid 230 230 230

Missing 0 0 0
Mean 1.56 1.56 2.85
Minimum 1 1 1
Maximum 4 6 6

Frequency Table of Accommodation Expenditure

Expenditure Accommodation

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid 0-50 131 57.0 57.0 57.0

51-100 77 33.5 33.5 90.4

101-150 14 6.1 6.1 96.5

151-200 8 3.5 3.5 100.0

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Expenditure Accommodation

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid 0-50 131 57.0 57.0 57.0

51-100 77 33.5 33.5 90.4

101-150 14 6.1 6.1 96.5

151-200 8 3.5 3.5 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of Activities Expenditure

Expenditure Activities

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid 0-50 128 55.7 55.7 55.7

51-100 84 36.5 36.5 92.2

101-150 13 5.7 5.7 97.8

151-200 2 .9 .9 98.7

201-250 2 .9 .9 99.6

More than 250 1 .4 .4 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of Transportation Expenditure

Expenditure Transportation

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid 0-50 44 19.1 19.1 19.1

51-100 69 30.0 30.0 49.1

101-150 54 23.5 23.5 72.6

151-200 26 11.3 11.3 83.9

201-250 14 6.1 6.1 90.0

More than 250 23 10.0 10.0 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

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C) Importance of Different Booking Decision Factors - Bar Charts

Reputation and
Price Importance Consumer Reviews Importance

Location Importance Star Rating Importance











Enviromental Friendliness
Importance

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D) Importance of Different Booking Decision Factors - Frequency Tables

Number of Valid versus Missing Values for Determining the

Distribution of Importance

Statistics

importance
importance reputation and

importance importance environmental consumer importance
price location friendliness reviews star rating

N Valid 308 308 308 308 308

Missin 0 0 0 0 0
g
Mean 1.20 1.46 3.31 1.95 2.57
Minimum 1 1 1 1 1
Maximum 2 5 5 5 5

Frequency Table of Price Importance - Dichotomous

importance price

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 247 80.2 80.2 80.2

agree 61 19.8 19.8 100.0

Total 308 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of Location Importance

importance location

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 195 63.3 63.3 63.3

agree 90 29.2 29.2 92.5

neutral 18 5.8 5.8 98.4

disagree 4 1.3 1.3 99.7

strongly disagree 1 .3 .3 100.0

Total 308 100.0 100.0



Frequency Table of Enviromental Friendliness Importance

Importance environmental friendliness

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 21 6.8 6.8 6.8

agree 43 14.0 14.0 20.8

neutral 119 38.6 38.6 59.4

disagree 71 23.1 23.1 82.5

strongly disagree 54 17.5 17.5 100.0

Total 308 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of Reputation and Consumer Reviews Importance

importance reputation and consumer reviews

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 110 35.7 35.7 35.7

agree 130 42.2 42.2 77.9

neutral 44 14.3 14.3 92.2

disagree 20 6.5 6.5 98.7

strongly disagree 4 1.3 1.3 100.0

Total 308 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of Star Rating Importance
importance star rating

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 54 17.5 17.5 17.5

agree 105 34.1 34.1 51.6

neutral 89 28.9 28.9 80.5

disagree 40 13.0 13.0 93.5

strongly disagree 20 6.5 6.5 100.0

Total 308 100.0 100.0

142



E) What Makes a Hotel Green - Frequency Tables

Green Construction Materials

green construction materials

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 97 42.2 42.2 42.2

agree 73 31.7 31.7 73.9

neutral 44 19.1 19.1 93.0

disagree 8 3.5 3.5 96.5

strongly disagree 8 3.5 3.5 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Energy Sources

renewable energy sources

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 157 68.3 68.3 68.3

agree 47 20.4 20.4 88.7

neutral 24 10.4 10.4 99.1

disagree 1 .4 .4 99.6

strongly disagree 1 .4 .4 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Green Business Operations

green business operations

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 115 50.0 50.0 50.0

agree 70 30.4 30.4 80.4

neutral 38 16.5 16.5 97.0

disagree 4 1.7 1.7 98.7

strongly disagree 3 1.3 1.3 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Green Cerifications

a certificate

143



Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 105 45.7 45.7 45.7

agree 55 23.9 23.9 69.6

neutral 50 21.7 21.7 91.3

disagree 15 6.5 6.5 97.8

strongly disagree 5 2.2 2.2 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Programs to Support Green Projects

programs to support green projects

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 82 35.7 35.7 35.7

agree 71 30.9 30.9 66.5

neutral 51 22.2 22.2 88.7

disagree 19 8.3 8.3 97.0

strongly disagree 7 3.0 3.0 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

144



F) Reasons for Hotels to Perform Green - Frequency Tables

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining

the Distribution of Reasons to Perform Green

A hotels main reason to perform green is

to cut a companys to get a government

costs. green attitude. marketing. certificate. regulations.

N Valid 230 230 230 230 230

Missing 0 0 0 0 0
Mean 3.10 1.83 1.90 2.19 2.67
Minimum 1 1 1 1 1
Maximum 5 5 5 5 5

Frequency Table of the Reason to Cut Costs

to cut costs

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 33 14.3 14.3 14.3

agree 34 14.8 14.8 29.1

neutral 73 31.7 31.7 60.9

disagree 56 24.3 24.3 85.2

strongly disagree 34 14.8 14.8 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of the Reason that a Company has a Green Attitude

a companys green attitude

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 98 42.6 42.6 42.6

agree 90 39.1 39.1 81.7

neutral 30 13.0 13.0 94.8

disagree 7 3.0 3.0 97.8

strongly disagree 5 2.2 2.2 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

145



Frequency Table of the Reason of Marketing

marketing

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 93 40.4 40.4 40.4

agree 92 40.0 40.0 80.4

neutral 28 12.2 12.2 92.6

disagree 9 3.9 3.9 96.5

strongly disagree 8 3.5 3.5 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of the Reason of Getting Certificated

to get a certificate

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 68 29.6 29.6 29.6

agree 90 39.1 39.1 68.7

neutral 43 18.7 18.7 87.4

disagree 18 7.8 7.8 95.2

strongly disagree 11 4.8 4.8 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of the Reason of Govermental Regulations

government regulations

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 41 17.8 17.8 17.8

agree 62 27.0 27.0 44.8

neutral 81 35.2 35.2 80.0

disagree 25 10.9 10.9 90.9

strongly disagree 21 9.1 9.1 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

146



G) What Makes People Stay in a Green Hotel Frequency Tables

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining the Distribution of What
Makes People Stay in a Green Hotel

Staying at a green hotel when travelling would enable me too

Frequency Table of the Reason to Eat Healthy and Fresh

green hotel - eat fresh and healthy foods

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 107 46.5 46.5 46.5

agree 69 30.0 30.0 76.5

neutral 38 16.5 16.5 93.0

disagree 11 4.8 4.8 97.8

strongly disagree 5 2.2 2.2 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of the Reason to Have Lower Prices

green hotel - have reduced prices

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 25 10.9 10.9 10.9

agree 21 9.1 9.1 20.0

neutral 57 24.8 24.8 44.8

disagree 70 30.4 30.4 75.2

strongly disagree 57 24.8 24.8 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

147



H) Who Make People Stay In a Green Hotel - Frequency Tables

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining the Distribution of Who
Make People Stay in a Green Hotel

Statistics

My colleagues (or
My family (or My friends think I co-workers) think
relatives) thinks I should stay at a I should stay at a
should stay at a green green hotel when green hotel when
hotel when traveling. traveling. traveling.

N Valid 230 230 230

Missing 0 0 0
Mean 3.72 3.63 3.60
Minimum 1 1 1
Maximum 5 5 5

People
Most people Most people whose I have
who are who are opinions I Whether or I am resources,
important to important to value would not I stay at a confident time, and

me think I me would prefer that I green hotel that if I want, opportunities
should stay at want me to stay at a when I can stay at to stay at a
a green hotel stay at a green green hotel traveling is a green hotel green hotel
when hotel when when completely when when
traveling. traveling. traveling. up to me. traveling. traveling.

N Valid 230 230 230 230 230 230

Missing 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mean 3.66 3.72 3.54 1.46 1.72 2.90
Minimum 1 1 1 1 1 1
Maximum 5 5 5 5 5 5

148



I) Reasons for/against staying in a Green Hotel Frequency Tables

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining the Distribution of Reasons
for/against staying in a Green Hotel

Statistics

My
Location of company/school/other
a green s that pays for travel

Staying at a Finding a green hotel hotel needs expenses encourage
green hotel is when traveling takes to be me to stay at a certain
expensive. time and effort. convenient. hotel.

N Valid 230 230 230 230

Missing 0 0 0 0
Mean 2.13 2.13 2.13 3.32
Minimum 1 1 1 1
Maximum 5 5 5 5

Frequency Table of Reasons for/against staying in a Green Hotel
- because it is Expensive

Staying at a green hotel is expensive.

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 57 24.8 24.8 24.8

agree 99 43.0 43.0 67.8

neutral 65 28.3 28.3 96.1

disagree 4 1.7 1.7 97.8

strongly disagree 5 2.2 2.2 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of Reasons for/against staying in a Green Hotel
- because it takes time and effort to find one

Finding a green hotel when traveling takes time and effort.

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 63 27.4 27.4 27.4

agree 91 39.6 39.6 67.0

neutral 63 27.4 27.4 94.3

149



disagree 9 3.9 3.9 98.3

strongly disagree 4 1.7 1.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

150



J) Supporting Green Practices - Frequency Tables

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining the Distribution of

Supporting Green Practices

Statistics

I am participating I think hotels are

in sustainable It is important for essentially
practices hotels to support contributing to

recommended by the preservation the negative
a hotel I am of the impacts on the
staying in environment. environment.

N Valid 230 230 230

Missing 0 0 0
Mean 1.49 1.54 2.40
Minimum 1 1 1
Maximum 5 5 5

Frequency Table of Supporting Green Practices in a Hotel

I am participating in sustainable practices recommended by a hotel I am staying in

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 154 67.0 67.0 67.0

agree 52 22.6 22.6 89.6

neutral 16 7.0 7.0 96.5

disagree 4 1.7 1.7 98.3

strongly disagree 4 1.7 1.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Frequency Table of the Customers Perception of the Importance for Hotels to
Support the Preservation of the Environment

It is important for hotels to support the preservation of the environment.

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 138 60.0 60.0 60.0

agree 64 27.8 27.8 87.8

neutral 24 10.4 10.4 98.3

disagree 3 1.3 1.3 99.6

strongly disagree 1 .4 .4 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

151



Frequency Table of the Customers Perception of the Hotels Negative Impact on

the environment

I think hotels are essentially contributing to the negative impacts on the environment.

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 55 23.9 23.9 23.9

agree 60 26.1 26.1 50.0

neutral 90 39.1 39.1 89.1

disagree 17 7.4 7.4 96.5

strongly disagree 8 3.5 3.5 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

152



K) New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) Scale Frequency Tables

We are approaching the limit of the number of people the earth can support

Cumulative

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 54 23.5 23.5 23.5

mildly agree 74 32.2 32.2 55.7

unsure 54 23.5 23.5 79.1

mildly disagree 35 15.2 15.2 94.3

strongly disagree 13 5.7 5.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Humans have the right to modify the natural environment to suit their needs

Cumulati
ve
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent

Valid strongly agree 12 5.2 5.2 5.2

mildly agree 34 14.8 14.8 20.0

unsure 54 23.5 23.5 43.5

mildly disagree 76 33.0 33.0 76.5

strongly disagree 54 23.5 23.5 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

When humans interfere with nature, it often produces disastrous consequences

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 81 35.2 35.2 35.2

mildly agree 85 37.0 37.0 72.2

unsure 46 20.0 20.0 92.2

mildly disagree 16 7.0 7.0 99.1

strongly disagree 2 .9 .9 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

153



Human ingenuity will insure that we do not make the earth unlivable

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 18 7.8 7.8 7.8

mildly agree 52 22.6 22.6 30.4

unsure 87 37.8 37.8 68.3

mildly disagree 46 20.0 20.0 88.3

strongly disagree 27 11.7 11.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Humans are severely abusing the earth

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 121 52.6 52.6 52.6

mildly agree 79 34.3 34.3 87.0

unsure 23 10.0 10.0 97.0

mildly disagree 4 1.7 1.7 98.7

strongly disagree 3 1.3 1.3 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

The earth has plenty of natural resources if we just learn how to develop them

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 61 26.5 26.5 26.5

mildly agree 64 27.8 27.8 54.3

unsure 61 26.5 26.5 80.9

mildly disagree 31 13.5 13.5 94.3

strongly disagree 13 5.7 5.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Plants and animals have as much right as humans to exist

154



Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 122 53.0 53.0 53.0

mildly agree 66 28.7 28.7 81.7

unsure 25 10.9 10.9 92.6

mildly disagree 14 6.1 6.1 98.7

strongly disagree 3 1.3 1.3 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

The balance of nature is strong enough to cope with the impacts of modern industrial nations

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 12 5.2 5.2 5.2

mildly agree 26 11.3 11.3 16.5

unsure 33 14.3 14.3 30.9

mildly disagree 70 30.4 30.4 61.3

strongly disagree 89 38.7 38.7 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Despite our special abilities, humans are still subject to the laws of nature

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 131 57.0 57.0 57.0

mildly agree 70 30.4 30.4 87.4

unsure 25 10.9 10.9 98.3

mildly disagree 3 1.3 1.3 99.6

strongly disagree 1 .4 .4 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

The so-called "ecological crisis" facing humankind has been greatly exaggerated

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 14 6.1 6.1 6.1

mildly agree 32 13.9 13.9 20.0

unsure 57 24.8 24.8 44.8

mildly disagree 71 30.9 30.9 75.7

strongly disagree 56 24.3 24.3 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

155



The earth is like a spaceship with very limited room and resources

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 86 37.4 37.4 37.4

mildly agree 79 34.3 34.3 71.7

unsure 36 15.7 15.7 87.4

mildly disagree 19 8.3 8.3 95.7

strongly disagree 10 4.3 4.3 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Humans were meant to rule over the rest of nature

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 8 3.5 3.5 3.5

mildly agree 23 10.0 10.0 13.5

unsure 42 18.3 18.3 31.7

mildly disagree 53 23.0 23.0 54.8

strongly disagree 104 45.2 45.2 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 90 39.1 39.1 39.1

mildly agree 80 34.8 34.8 73.9

unsure 38 16.5 16.5 90.4

mildly disagree 17 7.4 7.4 97.8

strongly disagree 5 2.2 2.2 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

Humans will eventually learn enough about how nature works to be able to control it

156



Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 13 5.7 5.7 5.7

mildly agree 36 15.7 15.7 21.3

unsure 57 24.8 24.8 46.1

mildly disagree 63 27.4 27.4 73.5

strongly disagree 61 26.5 26.5 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

If things continue on their present course, we will soon experience a major environmental
catastrophe

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid strongly agree 110 47.8 47.8 47.8

mildly agree 60 26.1 26.1 73.9

unsure 43 18.7 18.7 92.6

mildly disagree 11 4.8 4.8 97.4

strongly disagree 6 2.6 2.6 100.0

Total 230 100.0 100.0

157



L) Conjoint Analysis

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining the Distribution of Best and
Worst Hotel Profile Rank

Case Processing Summary

Cases
Valid Missing Total

N Percent N Percent N Percent

BWRank * Profile 16688 100.0% 0 .0% 16688 100.0%

Frequency Table of the 16 Hotels Profiles- Ranked Best and Worst

BWRank * Profile Crosstabulation

Number of Valid Versus Missing Values for Determining the Distribution of Best and
Worst Rank of Stars, Rating, Certification and Price

Case Processing Summary

Cases
Valid Missing Total

N Percent N Percent N Percent

Stars * BWRank 8344 100.0% 0 .0% 8344 100.0%

Rating * BWRank 8344 100.0% 0 .0% 8344 100.0%
Certif * BWRank 8344 100.0% 0 .0% 8344 100.0%
Organic * BWRank 8344 100.0% 0 .0% 8344 100.0%
Price * BWRank 8344 100.0% 0 .0% 8344 100.0%

158



Cross Tabulation of the Importance of Hotel Stars for customers

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Stars 3* Count 1778 2442 4220

Expected Count 2110.0 2110.0 4220.0

% within Stars 42.1% 57.9% 100.0%

% within BWRank 42.6% 58.5% 50.6%

Adjusted Residual -14.5 14.5

4/5* Count 2394 1730 4124

Expected Count 2062.0 2062.0 4124.0

% within Stars 58.1% 41.9% 100.0%

% within BWRank 57.4% 41.5% 49.4%

Adjusted Residual 14.5 -14.5

Total Count 4172 4172 8344

Expected Count 4172.0 4172.0 8344.0

% within Stars 50.0% 50.0% 100.0%

% within BWRank 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Chi-Square Test to Prove Significance Hotel Stars

Chi-Square Tests

Asymp. Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (1-

Value df sided) sided) sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 211.388

a
1 .000
Continuity Correction
b
210.751 1 .000
Likelihood Ratio 212.290 1 .000
Fisher's Exact Test .000 .000
Linear-by-Linear Association 211.362 1 .000
N of Valid Cases 8344

159



Bar Chart of Hotel Stars

Cross Tabulation of the Importance of Hotel Rating on TripAdvisor for customers

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Rating Excellent rating Count 2717 1574 4291

Expected Count 2145.5 2145.5 4291.0

% within Rating 63.3% 36.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 65.1% 37.7% 51.4%

Adjusted Residual 25.0 -25.0

Average rating Count 1455 2598 4053

Expected Count 2026.5 2026.5 4053.0

% within Rating 35.9% 64.1% 100.0%

% within BWRank 34.9% 62.3% 48.6%

Adjusted Residual -25.0 25.0

Total Count 4172 4172 8344

Expected Count 4172.0 4172.0 8344.0

% within Rating 50.0% 50.0% 100.0%

% within BWRank 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Chi-Square Test to Prove Significance - Tripadvisor

Chi-Square Tests

Asymp. Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (1-

Value df sided) sided) sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 626.804

a
1 .000
Continuity Correction
b
625.708 1 .000
Likelihood Ratio 634.925 1 .000
Fisher's Exact Test .000 .000
Linear-by-Linear Association 626.729 1 .000
N of Valid Cases 8344

160



Bar Chart of Hotel Rating on TripAdvisor

Cross Tabulation of the Importance of Hotel Green Certification for customers

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Certif not certified Count 1756 2475 4231

Expected Count 2115.5 2115.5 4231.0

% within Certif 41.5% 58.5% 100.0%

% within BWRank 42.1% 59.3% 50.7%

Adjusted Residual -15.7 15.7

certified Count 2416 1697 4113

Expected Count 2056.5 2056.5 4113.0

% within Certif 58.7% 41.3% 100.0%

% within BWRank 57.9% 40.7% 49.3%

Adjusted Residual 15.7 -15.7

Total Count 4172 4172 8344

Expected Count 4172.0 4172.0 8344.0

% within Certif 50.0% 50.0% 100.0%

% within BWRank 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Chi-Square Test to Prove Significance Green Certification

Chi-Square Tests

Asymp. Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (1-

Value df sided) sided) sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 247.874

a
1 .000
Continuity Correction
b
247.185 1 .000
Likelihood Ratio 249.117 1 .000
Fisher's Exact Test .000 .000
Linear-by-Linear Association 247.844 1 .000
N of Valid Cases 8344

161



Bar Chart of Hotel Green Certification

Cross Tabulation of the Importance of Hotel Use of Organic Products for customers

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Organic organic Count 2357 1891 4248

Expected Count 2124.0 2124.0 4248.0

% within Organic 55.5% 44.5% 100.0%

% within BWRank 56.5% 45.3% 50.9%

Adjusted Residual 10.2 -10.2

not organic Count 1815 2281 4096

Expected Count 2048.0 2048.0 4096.0

% within Organic 44.3% 55.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 43.5% 54.7% 49.1%

Adjusted Residual -10.2 10.2

Total Count 4172 4172 8344

Expected Count 4172.0 4172.0 8344.0

% within Organic 50.0% 50.0% 100.0%

% within BWRank 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Chi- Square Test to Prove Significance Organic Products

Chi-Square Tests

Asymp. Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (2- Exact Sig. (1-

Value df sided) sided) sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 104.136

a
1 .000
Continuity Correction
b
103.690 1 .000
Likelihood Ratio 104.354 1 .000
Fisher's Exact Test .000 .000
Linear-by-Linear Association 104.124 1 .000
N of Valid Cases 8344

162



Bar Chart of Hotel Use of Organic Products

Cross Tabulation of the Importance of Hotel Room Price for customers

Crosstab

BWRank

best worst Total

Price 90 Count 2491 178 2669

Expected Count 1334.5 1334.5 2669.0

% within Price 93.3% 6.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 59.7% 4.3% 32.0%

Adjusted Residual 54.3 -54.3

120 Count 973 595 1568

Expected Count 784.0 784.0 1568.0

% within Price 62.1% 37.9% 100.0%

% within BWRank 23.3% 14.3% 18.8%

Adjusted Residual 10.6 -10.6

150 Count 572 966 1538

Expected Count 769.0 769.0 1538.0

% within Price 37.2% 62.8% 100.0%

% within BWRank 13.7% 23.2% 18.4%

Adjusted Residual -11.1 11.1

180 Count 136 2433 2569

Expected Count 1284.5 1284.5 2569.0

% within Price 5.3% 94.7% 100.0%

% within BWRank 3.3% 58.3% 30.8%

Adjusted Residual -54.5 54.5

Total Count 4172 4172 8344

Expected Count 4172.0 4172.0 8344.0

% within Price 50.0% 50.0% 100.0%

% within BWRank 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

163



Chi-Square Test to Prove Significance Hotel Room Price

Chi-Square Tests

Asymp. Sig. (2-

Value df sided)
a
Pearson Chi-Square 4250.342 3 .000
Likelihood Ratio 5083.744 3 .000
Linear-by-Linear Association 4243.915 1 .000
N of Valid Cases 8344

Bar Chart of Hotel Room Price

164



M) Multiple Linear Regression

List of used Variables

b
Variables Entered/Removed

Model Variables Entered Variables Removed Method

d
1 Price_dich, Organic, . Enter

i
Certif_Twisted,
a
m
Stars_Twisted, Rating

a. All requested variables entered.

b. Dependent Variable: BWRank

Test of the R-Value for the Percentage of Correlation

Model Summary

Model Std. Error of the

R R Square Adjusted R Square Estimate
a
d
1 .730 .533 .533 .683

a. Predictors: (Constant), Price_dich, Organic, Certif_Twisted, Stars_Twisted,

Rating

165



ANOVA Test - Significance of the Multiple Regression Model

b
ANOVA

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

a
1 Regression 4451.349 5 890.270 1906.945 .000

Residual 3892.651 8338 .467

Total 8344.000 8343
a. Predictors: (Constant), Price_dich, Organic, Certif_Twisted, Stars_Twisted, Rating
b. Dependent Variable: BWRank
Coefficients to

Coefficients Test - Details About Individual Predictors
a
Coefficients

Model Unstandardized Standardized

Coefficients Coefficients Collinearity Statistics

B Std. Error Beta t Sig. Tolerance VIF

(Constant) -1.979 .052 -37.734 .000

Rating .507 .016 .253 32.380 .000 .914 1.095

Organic .235 .016 .117 15.083 .000 .924 1.083

Stars_Twisted .284 .016 .142 18.213 .000 .923 1.084

Certif_Twisted .421 .016 .210 26.999 .000 .922 1.085

Price_dich 1.216 .015 .608 80.698 .000 .986 1.014

a. Dependent Variable: BWRank

Collinearity Diagnostics - Testing the presence of Data Error
a
Collinearity Diagnostics

Dimension Condition Variance Proportions

Eigenvalue Index (Constant) Rating Organic Stars Certif Price

d
1 5.576 1.000 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00 .00

i 2 .130 6.546 .00 .18 .18 .13 .20 .01

m
3 .122 6.750 .00 .16 .20 .22 .17 .00
e

dime
4 .091 7.843 .00 .06 .06 .09 .00 .87

5 .064 9.316 .00 .39 .31 .32 .40 .02

n

nsion

1 6 .017 18.275 1.00 .20 .24 .24 .23 .10

i

a. Dependent Variable: BWRank

166